STORY  OF 
MARY  WASHING 


BY  MARION  HARLAND 


THE   STORY   OF 
MARY  WASHINGTON 


BY 

MARION    HARLAND 
ii 

WITH  PORTRAIT  AND  EIGHT  ILLUSTRATIONS 


"  I  have  seen  the  only  Roman  matron  living  at  this  day." 

Lafayette,  1784. 


BOSTON   AND    NEW   YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

Cfre  fitoersi&e  Prr#0,  Cambridge 

1893 


Copyright,  1892, 

BY  THE  NATIONAL  MARY  WASHINGTON 
MEMORIAL  ASSOCIATION. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Company. 


LIST  OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

PHOTOGRAVURE  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  AT  TWENTY- 
THREE.  (Original  in  possession  of  Mrs.  S.  F.  B. 
Morse.)  ......  Frontispiece 

BAS-RELIEF  OVER  DRAWING-ROOM  MANTEL  IN  KEN- 
MORE  106 

MARY  WASHINGTON  COTTAGE       .        .        .        .no 

WALK  IN  WHICH  MRS.  WASHINGTON  MET  LAFAY 
ETTE,  AT  BACK  OF  COTTAGE  .  .  .  .124 

KENMORE,  RESIDENCE  OF  "  BETTY  "  (WASHINGTON) 
LEWIS 132 

ROCK  NEAR  UNFINISHED  TOMB,  A  FAVORITE  RE 
SORT  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  ....  142 

KENMORE  AS  SEEN  FROM  THE  "ORATORY  ROCK"     144 

UNFINISHED  MONUMENT  TO  MARY  THE  MOTHER 
OF  WASHINGTON 154 

CORNER  OF  ROOM  IN  WHICH  MARY  WASHINGTON 
DIED 164 


284345 


THE 

STORY   OF   MARY   WASHINGTON 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE  counties  of  Westmoreland,  Rich 
mond,  Northumberland,  and  Lancaster,  in 
eastern  Virginia,  form  the  peninsula  that 
separates  the  Rappahannock  from  the  Poto 
mac  River.  In  the  year  1700,  Lancaster 
County  lent  character  to  the  "  Northern 
Neck,"  famed  for  broad  plantations  and  for 
the  wealth  and  refinement  of  the  inhabitants. 

The  largest  landholder  in  this  region  was 
Robert  Carter,  of  Corotoman,  a  territorial 
grant  washed  upon  the  east  by  the  Chesa 
peake,  and  upon  the  south  by  the  Rappa 
hannock.  The  latter  is  a  lordly  stream  at 
this  point,  and  navigable  for  over  a  hundred 
miles  from  the  mouth.  John  Carter,  the 
father  of  Robert,  built  in  1670  the  first 


4      THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

Episcopal  church  on  the  Neck.  His  name 
had  headed  the  list  of  parish  vestrymen  in 
1654,  preceding  that  of  the  clergyman,  —  an 
arbitrary  order  followed  in  the  cases  of  his 
namesake-son  John,  and  Robert,  surnamed 
"  King "  Carter,  the  greatest  of  the  line. 
The  temper  and  customs  of  the  day  and 
country  were  semi-feudal ;  leaders  were  few 
in  number  and  despotic  in  spirit.  If  plant 
ers  and  small  farmers  dwelt  together  in 
unity  it  was  because  the  autocrat's  position 
was  not  questioned. 

So  near  to  Christ  Church  which  the  first 
Carter  had  builded,  that  the  two  were  early 
in  the  eighteenth  century  united  into  one 
parish,  was  St.  Mary's  White  Chapel ;  the 
place  of  worship  for  those  belonging  to  this 
parish  was  a  chapel-of-ease  of  the  mother- 
church.  Prominent  among  her  vestrymen 
for  almost  one  hundred  years  was  the  name 
of  Ball.  It  occurs  so  frequently  upon 
the  crumbling  tombstones  paving  the  old 
churchyard  as  to  persuade  one  into  the  idea 
that  this  was,  at  the  first,  a  family  burying- 
ground,  and  the  chapel  an  afterthought. 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON      5 

The  present  building,  erected  in  1 740,  occu 
pies  the  site  of  one  which  was  attended  reg 
ularly  by  Colonel  Joseph  Ball,  of  Lancaster. 
His  father,  William  Ball,  emigrated  from 
England  about  the  year  1650,  and  settled 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Corotoman  River,  a 
tributary  of  the  Rappahannock.  His  home 
stead,  Epping  Forest,  one  of  the  centres  of 
influence  to  which  I  have  referred,  was  in 
herited  by  Joseph  Ball.  The  parish  record 
has  an  entry  to  the  effect  that  while  White 
Chapel  was  in  building  in  1740,  Joseph 
Ball  asked  and  obtained  leave  to  construct 
a  gallery  in  the  same  for  his  family  pew. 
Stipulation  was  made  that  it  "  be  completed 
at  the  same  time  with  the  church,  and  fin 
ished  in  the  same  style  with  the  West  gal 
lery."  The  vestryman-petitioner  was  made 
colonel  by  Governor  Spotswoode,  who  en 
tered  upon  the  duties  of  his  office  in  1710. 

The  owner  of  Epping  Forest  was  then 
plain  "  Mr.,"  or  at  most,  "  Major,"  on  the 
late  autumnal  day  in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
1706,  when  his  youngest  child,  Mary,  was 
born. 


6      THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

There  were  other  children  in  the  home: 
Joseph  and  Hannah  by  a  former  marriage, 
and  the  "  Sister  Susie,"  of  whom  we  hear  in 
Mary's  letters,  and  who  was  probably  her 
own  mother's  child.  The  Ball  house  was 
a  square  frame  structure,  plain  in  architec 
ture,  with  a  porch  in  front,  and  upper  and 
lower  porticos  recessed  by  two  half-wings, 
in  the  rear.  A  grove  of  native  trees  sur 
rounded  it  on  all  sides.  We  get  our  first 
mention  of  the  baby-girl  in  a  will  executed 
by  her  father,  when  she  was  between  five 
and  six  years  old :  — 

"  I  give  and  bequeath  unto  my  daughter, 
Mary,  400  acres  of  land  in  Richmond 
County  in  ye  freshes  of  Rappa-h-n  River, 
being  a  part  of  a  pattern  of  1600  acres  to 
her,  ye  said  Mary  and  her  heirs  forever." 

When  this  was  written  the  testator  was, 
he  states,  "  lying  upon  the  bed  in  my  lodg 
ing-chamber,  making  my  last  will  and  testa 
ment,  commending  my  soul  to  GOD  with 
sound  and  disposing  mind." 

In  the  scarcity  of  information  respecting 
Mary  Ball's  childhood  and  girlhood,  we 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     7 

catch  eagerly  at  the  shadowy  sketch  indi 
cated  to  a  lively  fancy  by  the  few  lines  cop 
ied  above.  The  "  lodging-chamber,"  the 
heart  of  the  old  Virginia  country-house, 
was,  we  assume,  upon  the  first  floor  of  the 
square  dwelling.  Upon  the  25th  of  June, 
the  date  of  this  instrument,  windows  and 
doors  would  stand  wide  open  to  every  wind 
of  heaven.  The  leaves  of  oaks,  hickories, 
and  poplars  would  be  quivering  in  the  salt 
air  blowing  fresh  from  the  Bay;  mocking 
birds  and  robins  were  singing  in  rapturous 
chorus,  and  the  voice  of  the  baby  of  the 
household  blending  with  all  other  jocund 
sounds  while  the  sick  man  made  provision 
for  her,  her  heirs,  and  assigns. 

That,  although  "  smitten  with  sore  sick 
ness,"  the  good  vestryman  did  not  then  join 
his  kindred  in  the  churchyard  of  White 
Chapel,  we  gather  from  the  partial  list  of 
contributors  to  the  salary  of  Rev.  John  Bell, 
of  Christ  Church,  Lancaster,  in  1712. 
Colonel  Joseph  Ball  subscribed  five  pounds, 
equal  then  to  treble  that  sum  in  our  day. 
His  title  of  "Colonel  Ball,  of  Lancaster" 


8      THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

was  used  to  distinguish  him  from  a  cousin  of 
the  same  name  and  rank,  resident  in  another 
county.  His  brother,  William  Ball,  had 
eight  sons,  five  of  whom  married  and  left 
sons  to  keep  alive  his  name  upon  the  earth. 
We  hear  of  but  four  children  of  Colonel 
Joseph  Ball,  and  his  only  son  had  no  male 
issue. 

The  Ball  coat-of-arms  is  thus  described: 
"  The  escutcheon  bears  a  lion  rampant,  a 
coat-of-mail,  and  a  shield  bearing  two  lions 
and  a  fleur  de  lys.  The  crest  is  a  helmet 
with  closed  visor.  Above  the  lion  is  a 
broad  bar,  half  red  and  half  gold.  On  the 
scroll  which  belongs  to  it  are  these  words : 
'  Cczlumqne  tueri!  " 

"  They  were  taken,  of  course,"  says  Bishop 
Meade,  in  his  "  Old  Churches  and  Families 
of  Virginia,"  "  from  these  lines  of  Ovid :  — 

"  '  Pronaque  cum  spectant  animalia  castera  terram 
Os  homini  sublime  dedit  caelumque  tueri.'  " 

These  particulars  are  given  the  more 
fully  because  of  an  impression,  as  errone 
ous  as  general,  prevailing  among  superficial 
readers  of  American  history  to  the  effect 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     9 

that  Mary  Washington's  origin  was  obscure 
and  her  breeding  mean.  Her  lineage  —  if 
less  august  than  that  of  her  husband,  whose 
descent  from  William  de  Hertburn,  Lord 
of  the  Manor  of  Washington  in  the  time  of 
Richard  III.,  is  clearly  proved  —  was  not 
ignoble,  nor  were  her  associations  ever 
other  than  those  of  dignified  respectability. 
"  King  "  Carter's  family  were  the  Balls'  near 
neighbors  and  friends,  and  their  circle  of  ac 
quaintances,  if  not  extensive  in  the  sparsely 
settled  country  where  their  lot  was  cast,  was 
the  best  that  country  afforded. 

After  Colonel  Ball's  death,  which  took 
place  while  Mary  was  but  a  child,  the 
widow,  according  to  a  kinswoman,  lived 
many  years,  "  which  were  undoubtedly  de 
voted  to  careful  training  of  her  child,  fitting 
her,  as  it  proved,  to  pass  with  rare  firmness 
and  fortitude  through  the  trials  and  vicissi 
tudes  that  later  life  laid  upon  her." 

The  blast  of  civil  war,  that  unroofed  so 
many  homes  and  lost  to  posterity  records 
of  incalculable  value,  fluttered  to  the  feet  of 
a  reverent  chronicler  a  fragment  of  a  pri- 


10   THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

vate  letter  found  in  a  deserted  mansion 
near  the  York  River,  which  is  beyond  price 
to  those  who  are  interested  in  the  story  of 
Mary  Ball's  early  life.  Despair,  indignant 
and  impotent,  seizes  us  at  the  thought  of 
how  much  as  precious  and  even  more  satis 
factory  to  the  student  of  colonial  history  was 
destroyed  like  so  much  waste  paper  in  those 
four  years  of  wrath  and  desolation.  The 
letter,  from  which  the  signature  is  missing, 
begins  thus :  — 

"WnsBuRG,  ye  7th  of  Octr,  1722 

"  DEAR  SUKEY,  Madam  Ball  of  Lancas 
ter  and  Her  Sweet  Molly  have  gone  Horn. 
Mamma  thinks  Molly  the  Comliest  Maiden 
She  Knows.  She  is  about  16  yrs  old,  is 
taller  than  Me,  is  verry  Sensable,  Modest 
and  Loving.  Her  Hair  is  like  unto  Flax, 
Her  Eyes  are  the  color  of  Yours  and  her 
Chekes  are  like  May  blossoms.  I  wish  you 
could  see  her." 

We  do  seem  to  see  her  in  lingering  over 
the  portrait  done  in  miniature  in  colors  that 
are  fresh  to  this  day.  It  is,  as  if  in  explor 
ing  a  catacomb,  we  had  happened  upon  a 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  II 

fair  chamber  adorned  with  a  frescoed  por 
trait  of  a  girl-princess  of  a  legendary  age. 
Romancist  and  biographer  are  one  as  we 
study  the  picture,  line  by  line.  The  brush 
was  dipped  in  the  limner's  heart  and 
wrought  passing  well.  A  shade  of  demure- 
ness  is  imparted  to  winsome  Molly  by  the 
mention  of  Madam  Ball  and  by  the  citation 
of  the  nameless  writer's  mamma's  approval 
of  her  daughter's  intimate,  —  demureness 
that  becomes  the  maiden  as  moss  the  half- 
opened  rose. 

She  sits  for  her  likeness  upon  a  stool  in 
Madam  Ball's  shadow,  the  blue  eyes  glan 
cing  shyly  up  from  her  sampler,  and  the  May 
blossoms  (that  must  mean  wild  roses  as  they 
blush  upon  the  Eastern  shore)  unfolding 
in  her  "  chekes  "  at  her  hostess's  commen 
dation  of  her  "  comliness."  The  October 
sunshine  is  tangled  in  curls  that  are  "  like 
unto  flax,"  and  soften  the  contour  of  a  fore 
head  that  would  be,  but  for  their  shading, 
too  high  for  feminine  loveliness.  A  like 
ness,  reputed  to  be  of  her,  taken  at  twenty- 
three,  shows  us  this,  and  that  her  nose  was 


12    THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

a  delicate  aquiline,  her  mouth  small,  with 
firm  lines  that  would  become  severe  under 
the  pressure  of  circumstance.  We  are  told, 
moreover,  that  her  voice  was  to  the  last 
of  her  life  sweet,  with  pleasant  English 
cadences.  She  and  her  mother  had  been 
visiting  Williamsburg,  just  then  in  the  flush 
of  its  lately  acquired  honors  as  the  capital 
of  the  State.  A  brave  life  and  a  gay  was 
that  of  which  Mary  Ball  had  glimpses  from 
under  the  wing  of  the  discreet  mother.  To 
the  eyes  of  the  provincial  beauty  Duke  of 
Gloucester  Street  must  have  been  what  the 
Mall  was  to  Miss  Burney's  "  Evelina,"  and 
the  Apollo  Room  at  the  Raleigh  Tavern  on 
Assembly  nights  as  much  like  a  scene  of 
Arabian  enchantment  as  Vauxhall  to  that 
unsophisticated  diarist  and  correspondent. 

Virginia's  most  graceful  historian,  John 
Esten  Cooke,  is  especially  happy  in  delinea 
tion  of  life  in  the  capital  at  that  date.  This 
is  one  of  his  pictures,  beginning  with  the 
celebrated  tavern  wherein  Jefferson  danced 
with  his  Belinda  :  — 

"  It  was  on  Gloucester  Street,  a  building 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    13 

of  wood,  erected  about  1 700,  with  entrances 
on  both  fronts,  and  a  leaden  bust  of  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh  over  the  main  doorway. 
The  large  apartment  called  the  *  Apollo 
Room  '  was  a  favorite  place  for  balls. 

"  The  town  consisted  of  detached  houses 
without  pretensions  to  architectural  beauty, 
but  this  modest  hamlet  was  the  scene  of 
much  that  was  brilliant  and  attractive  in 
Virginia  society.  .  .  .  The  love  of  social 
intercourse  had  been  a  marked  trait  of 
the  Virginians  in  all  generations.  .  .  .  The 
violins  seemed  to  be  ever  playing  for  the 
divertissement  of  the  youths  and  maidens ; 
the  good  horses  were  running  for  the  purse 
or  cup ;  cocks  were  fighting ;  the  College 
students  were  mingling  with  the  throng  in 
their  academic  dress.  ...  It  was  a  scene 
full  of  gayety  and  abandon." 

The  population  of  Virginia  was,  in  1722, 
rated  at  70,000,  double  that  of  Maryland, 
the  next  most  populous  colony,  and  there 
was  but  one  older  college  in  North  America 
than  her  William  and  Mary,  now  well  es 
tablished  in  the  renewed  lease  of  life  in- 


14    THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

augurated  after  the  fire  of  1705.  Pretty 
Molly  Ball  had  strolled  past  the  University 
buildings  at  the  head  of  Gloucester  Street 
and  looked  down  the  mile-long  vista,  straight 
as  plumb-line  could  make  it,  and  edged 
with  fine  trees,  to  the  Capitol  at  the  far 
end.  Perhaps  she  was  escorted  through 
them  by  a  gallant  collegian  with  "  dear  Su- 
key's "  correspondent  upon  the  other  side 
of  her.  She  had  stared  and  laughed  at  the 
queer  octagonal  stone  construction,  already 
yclept  "  The  Powder  Horn,"  built  by  Gov 
ernor  Spotswoode  in  1717  as  a  magazine 
for  ammunition.  Her  soft  eyes  had  rounded 
with  delight  at  sight  of  the  Governor's 
Palace,  the  wonder  of  the  tide-water  region, 
standing  in  the  middle  of  pleasure-grounds 
between  three  and  four  hundred  acres  in  ex 
tent,  planted  with  tulip-poplars,  maples,  lin 
dens,  and  aspens  ;  had  doubtless  looked  in 
loyal  reverence  upon  the  portraits  of  king, 
queen,  and  princes  that  hung  in  the  state 
reception-room.  Being  ever  "  verry  sensa- 
ble  "  and  thoughtful,  she  must  have  carried 
back  to  the  seclusion  of  Epping  Forest  ma- 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  IS 

terial  for  reflection  and  talk  for  months  to 
come.  Even  if  this  were  her  first  visit  to 
Williamsburg,  she  could  never  again  be  an 
unlearned  rustic  to  whom  news  of  the  gay 
world  was  like  messages  in  an  unknown 
tongue  from  foreign  lands. 

Four  months  thereafter  (January  14,  1723) 
we  have  something  from  our  heroine's  own 
hand  that  may  or  may  not  denote  the  growth 
of  intellectual  tastes  implanted  during  her 
sojourn  at  the  seat  of  polite  literature 
and  the  birthplace  of  Virginia  journalism. 
"  Brother  Joseph,"  the  elder  and  mentor  of 
the  half-sister,  grown  to  manhood,  had  suc 
ceeded  his  father  as  her  virtual  if  not  legal 
guardian.  He  had  been  sent  to  England 
to  be  educated,  a  custom  much  in  vogue 
with  those  of  the  early  colonists  who  could 
afford  the  advantage  for  their  sons.  It  goes 
far  toward  accounting  for  the  circumstance 
that  the  education  of  the  men  of  the  times 
was  so  far  superior  to  that  of  the  girls. 
Joseph  Ball,  Jr.,  had  fallen  in  love  with 
London,  and  never  again  resided  in  America 
except  for  a  few  months  at  a  time.  These 


1 6    THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

visits  must,  however,  have  been  tolerably 
frequent,  and  his  supervision  of  his  young 
sister  conscientiously  strict,  if  we  are  to 
judge  from  her  deference  to  him,  her  con 
tinual  reference  of  all  matters  of  weight  to 
his  superior  judgment,  and  the  masterful 
tone  in  which  he  addressed  her.  He  had 
married  an  Englishwoman,  and  was  now  a 
city  barrister,  resident  at  Stratford-by-Bow, 
London. 

"  Few  of  her  letters  remain.  It  is  prob 
able  that  few  were  written,"  says  Mary  Ball's 
kinswoman-biographer.  "  The  handwriting 
is  stiff  and  cramped,  the  spelling  bad,  but 
they  are  most  sensibly  and  earnestly  ex 
pressed." 

Queen  Anne  spelled  no  better,  and  Mary 
Ball's  handwriting  is  as  legible  as  copper 
plate,  albeit  school-girlish  and  ungraceful. 

She  was  in  her  seventeenth  year,  having 
celebrated  her  sixteenth  birthday  soon  after 
her  return  from  visiting  "dear  Sukey's  " 
confidante,  when  she  indited  a  letter  upon 
family  matters  to  her  fraternal  guardian,  in 
which  is  the  following  paragraph :  — 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    I/ 

"  We  have  not  had  a  schoolmaster  in 
our  neighborhood  until  now  in  nearly  four 
years.  We  have  now  a  young  minister  liv 
ing  with  us  who  was  educated  at  Oxford, 
took  orders  and  came  over  as  assistant  to 
Rev.  Kemp,  at  Gloucester.  That  parish  is 
too  poor  to  keep  both,  and  he  teaches 
school  for  his  board.  He  teaches  Sister 
Susie  and  me  and  Madam  Carter's  boy  and 
two  girls.  I  am  now  learning  pretty  fast. 
Mamma  and  Susie  and  I  all  send  love  to 
you  and  Mary.  This  from  your  loving  sister, 

"  MARY  BALL." 

Bishop  Meade  speaks  of  the  Kempes  of 
Gloucester  as  "  having  at  an  early  period  in 
the  history  of  Virginia  been  characterized 
by  devotion  to  the  welfare  of  the  Church 
and  religion,"  but  one  scans  in  vain  his 
annals  of  the  parishes  in  Gloucester  for 
record  of  the  name  of  "  Rev.  Kemp."  It 
is,  therefore,  idle  to  conjecture  as  to  who 
was  his  assistant,  the  young  Oxonian  whose 
name  demure  Molly  omits  so  cavalierly. 
The  failure  to  write  it  in  any  part  of  the 


1 8    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

communication  may  have  been  the  result  of 
indifference  bordering  upon  contempt  on 
the  part  of  one  who  had  already  won  the 
title  of  the  "  Belle  of  the  Northern  Neck," 
or  the  lapse  may  be  significant.  The  care 
less  note  of  such  an  important  event 'as  the 
addition  to  the  country  household  of  a 
young  minister  educated  at  Oxford,  and 
who,  she  is  careful  to  state,  took  orders 
there,  savors  of  studied  negligence.  She 
may  not  have  cared  to  call  the  prosperous 
London  barrister's  attention  to  the  perilous 
propinquity  of  his  sister  to  a  curate  who 
was  content  (or  compelled)  to  teach  five  pu 
pils  for  his  board  in  Madam  Ball's  family. 
Brother  Joseph's  word  was  potential  with  his 
much-younger  sister,  possibly  with  his  step 
mother,  and  Mary  may  have  had  a  shrewd 
fear  that  her  scholastic  career  might  be  ar 
rested  if  his  suspicions  were  excited  by  de 
tails  of  the  personality  and  qualifications  of 
the  tutor.  If  such  an  idea  crossed  her  mind 
she  hastened  to  avert  the  danger  by  casually 
and  agreeably  remarking  that  she  was  now 
"learning  pretty  fast."  Her  naive  compla- 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  19 

cency  is  engaging.  Evidently  her  untrained 
powers  had  required  considerable  breaking- 
in.  At  sixteen  she  would  be  "  in  society," 
and  to  fold  her  wings  into  the  school-girl 
chrysalis  demanded  an  effort. 

It  is  to  be  deplored  that  the  transcriber 
of  this  one  of  the  few  letters  that  bear  her 
signature  thought  it  seemly  to  put  the 
orthography  into  shape.  A  quaint  flavor, 
as  of  lavender  and  dried  rose-leaves,  clings 
to  the  yellow  old  pages  covered  with  un- 
practiced  characters  that  have  come  down 
to  us  from  the  average  woman  of  the  last 
century,  and  much  of  the  charm  is  due  to 
the  reckless  defiance  of  all  rules  touching 
spelling  and  the  use  of  capitals. 

An  ancient  gentlewoman,  whose  wit  was 
the  joy  of  her  intimates,  once  defended  this 
lawlessness,  and  not  unsuccessfully:  — 

"  Language  is  only  the  vehicle  of  thought," 
she  argued.  "  In  those  days  people  cared 
little  for  varnish  and  plating.  The  main 
thing  was  to  have  the  vehicle  hold  together 
and  be  safe  and  comfortable." 

Without  their  old-time  perfume,  letters  a 


20   THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

hundred  years  old  are  shorn  and  flat.  We 
are  glad  that  Mary  Ball's  enthusiastic  pane 
gyrist  wrote  of  her  "  chekes,"  and  we  smile, 
almost  affectionately,  over  the  two  r's  in  the 
"  verry  "  that  qualifies  "  sensable."  It  would 
have  been  interesting  to  see  how  Mary 
spelled  —  say  such  words  as  "  schoolmaster" 
and  "  assistant "  —  after  four  years'  famine 
(or  respite)  from  pedagogues,  and  while  her 
learning  was  in  a  state  of  satisfactory  for 
wardness. 

In  this  epistle  we  have  the  only  definite 
allusion  to  the  fourth  child  of  Colonel  Ball, 
—  "  Sister  Susie."  History  is  dumb,  but  for 
this  passing  mention,  as  to  this  one  of  Wash 
ington's  maternal  aunts,  and  tradition  tells 
us  nothing  beyond  what  we  glean  from 
Mary's  prim  talk  of  her  fellow-student  who 
joins  her  and  "  Mama  "  in  sending  love  to 
the  far-away  kindred.  That  she  learned  her 
lessons  from  Rev.  Kemp's  curate  would  im 
ply  nearness  in  age  to  the  youngest  of  the 
band,  and  we  hope  that  Mary  had  this  one 
full-blooded  sister. 

Madam  Carter's  boy  and  two  girls  prob- 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  21 

ably  represented  one  fourth  of  the  dozen 
olive-plants  that  had  grown  up  about  the 
wide-leaved  table  of  "  King  "  Carter.  The 
family  school  was  an  English  custom  brought 
over  with  heirlooms  of  lace  and  silver  from 
"  Home,"  and  which  in  some  sections  of 
Virginia  has  outlived  the  "  onward-and-up- 
ward  "  rush  of  free  and  popular  school-edu 
cation. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE  chronicler  to  whom  the  MSS.  found 
in  the  dismantled  mansion  of  the  York 
River  were  consigned  supplies  us  with  an 
other  and  important  event  in  Mary  Ball's 
girlhood.  A  fragment  of  a  tattered,  faded 
letter,  signed  "  Lizzy  Burwell,"  retains  part 
of  the  address  to  "  Miss  Nelly  Car  "  —  (un 
doubtedly  "  Carter "),  and  of  the  heading 
and  date,  —  "tank"  (why  not  Piaukatank, 
the  next  parish  to  Lancaster,  or  perhaps 
Chotank,  afterward  the  seat  of  a  Lawrence 
Washington?)  —  "  May  ye  \$tk  1728."  The 
paper  crumbled  at  the  reader's  touch ;  the 
yellow-brown  blotches  that  bespeak  the 
thumbing  of  Time  ran  together  all  over 
the  sheet.  But  three  short  lines  were  legi 
ble  even  to  eyes  skilled  in  deciphering  an 
cient  records :  — 

..."  understand  Molly  Ball  is  going 
home  with  her  Brother,  a  Lawyer,  who  lives 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  2$ 

in  England.      Her  Mother   is  Dead    three 
months  ago,  and  her  Sister  "  — 

Ah,  her  sister  !  what  of  "  Sister  Susie  "  ? 
Does  the  "  and  "  awkwardly  include  Molly's 
school-fellow  in  the  death-roll  with  the 
mother?  It  might  well  read,  "and  her 
Sister  died  last  year,  or  last  month,  or  last 
week."  If  she  went  on  to  say,  "  her  Sister 
was  married  the  other  day,"  some  Lancas 
ter  genealogist  would  have  added  to  the  list 
of  "  William  and  Joseph  Ball ;  William's 
daughter  Hannah,  who  married  Daniel  Fox; 
his  eight  sons;  Colonel  Burgess  Hall,  only 
son  of  Jeduthun  the  third,  youngest  son  of 
James,  the  third  son  of  said  William  ;  Jo 
seph  Ball,  Jr.,  who  had  no  male  issue,  but 
whose  nephew  was  General  George  Wash 
ington,  son  of  his  sister  Mary,  youngest 
daughter  of  Colonel  Joseph  Ball,  of  Lan 
caster  ;  David  Ball,  seventh  son  of  Captain 
William  Ball,  born  in  1686," --and  an  in 
terminable  line  of  other  worthies,  who  were 
begotten,  who  lived,  and  who  died  on  the 
Northern  Neck,  —  some  local  antiquarian 
would,  I  say,  have  bracketed  with  these 


24   THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

Susan  Ball,  who  married  this  or  that  planter, 
or  maybe  an  imported  clergyman. 

It  seems  altogether  likely  that  when  the 
orphaned  Mary  left  Epping  Forest  forever 
to  become  a  part  of  Brother  Joseph's  family, 
she  left  none  nearer  in  blood  than  he  to  be 
regretted  in  her  exile.  It  was  a  long  fare 
well  to  the  girlish  days  that  were  slipping 
away  from  her,  according  to  the  prejudice 
of  that  era.  She  was  within  a  few  months 
of  two-and-twenty,  and  still  Molly  Ball, 
spinster.  Southern  girls  went  off  in  looks 
earlier  then  than  in  our  favored  days,  and 
as  a  rule  went  off  the  single  list  between 
sixteen  and  twenty.  Gray  shadows  had  be 
gun  to  chase  the  blue  out  of  the  eyes  of  her 
who  had  borne  modestly  the  sobriquets  of 
the  "  Belle  of  the  Northern  Neck,"  and  the 
"  Rose  of  Epping  Forest ;  "  the  flaxen  curls 
were  darkening  into  chestnut,  and  in  tide 
water  Virginia  May  blossoms  are  short 
lived. 

There  is  comfort  in  the  knowledge  that 
Brother  Joseph  was  with  her  to  superintend 
the  breaking  up  of  the  home,  and  to  sustain 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON  2$ 

his  sister's  courage  under  all  that  the  phrase 
implies.  Bishop  Meade  asserts,  and  with 
authority,  the  identity  of  Mary  Ball's  brother 
with  Mr.  Joseph  Ball,  of  Lancaster,  of  whose 
activity  in  promoting  good  works  he  cites 
an  instance.  An  entry  made  in  the  records 
of  Lancaster  County  in  1729  sets  forth :  — 

"  A  proposition  of  Joseph  Ball,  Gentle 
man,  in  behalf  of  himself  and  the  rest  of 
the  inhabitants  of  Virginia,  directed  to  the 
Honourable  the  General  Assembly  concern 
ing  the  instructing  a  certain  number  of 
young  gentlemen,  Virginians  born,  in  the 
study  of  divinity,  at  the  county's  charge, 
was  this  day  presented  in  court  by  the  said 
Joseph  Ball,  and  on  his  prayer,  ordered  to 
be  certified  to  the  General  Assembly." 

How  the*  stout  churchman  who  thus  si^- 

o 

nified  his  own  willingness  to  be  taxed  that 
the  ranks  of  the  native  clergy  might  be 
filled  could  be  an  "  inhabitant  of  Virginia," 
and  at  the  same  time  "  a  Lawyer  who  lives 
in  England/'  can  only  be  explained  by  as 
suming  that  he  retained  his  colonial  estates 
and  worked  the  principle  of  absenteeism  in 


26   THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

both  directions.  A  residence  of  months  — 
perhaps  of  over  a  year  —  in  Lancaster  at  the 
time  of  his  mother's  death  may  have  suf 
ficed  to  the  legal  conscience  of  the  land 
holder  to  justify  the  claim  of  citizenship. 
If  he  were  the  "  Gentleman  "  referred  to  in 
the  record,  and  whose  only  daughter  Fanny 
married  Raleigh  Downman  in  1750,  Mary 
Ball  did  not  sail  for  England  until  a  year 
after  Lizzie  Burwell  wrote  of  the  rumor 
that  the  common  acquaintance  of  herself 
and  Nelly  Carter  was  going  home  with  her 
brother.  The  venerable  annalist  of  the 
church  he  loved  and  served  so  well  sets  no 
bounds  about  the  declaration,  —  "  This  Jo 
seph  Ball  was  the  uncle  of  George  Wash 
ington." 

In  the  parish  register  of  the  village  of 
Cookham,  Berkshire,  England,  are  the  names 
of  numerous  Washingtons  and  several  Balls. 
A  local  legend,  rehearsed  by  Benson  J.  Los- 
sing,  designates  a  Cookham  villa  as  that 
occupied  by  Mary  Ball  after  her  marriage. 
As  Joseph  Ball  was  living  at  "  Stratford-by- 
Bow  Nigh  London  "in  1723,  and  also  in 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  2/ 

1760,  and  the  presumption  is  that  his  sister 
carried  out  her  expressed  design  of  living 
with  him,  it  is  hardly  likely  that  she  met  at 
Cookham,  under  the  circumstances  detailed 
by  another  tradition,  the  man  whose  wife 
she  was  to  become. 

This  story  runs  that  the  fair  American 
was  residing  in  the  Berkshire  village  with 
relatives  who  had  given  her  a  home  in  her 
orphanhood  when  a  gentleman's  traveling 
chariot  was  upset  in  front  of  the  house,  and 
he  was  brought  in,  seriously  injured.  He 
proved  to  be  Miss  Ball's  countryman,  Mr. 
Augustine  Washington,  and  she  bore  a  dis 
tinguished  part  in  nursing  him. 

"  In  Virginia,"  surmises  Lossing,  "  since 
the  Washingtons  and  Balls  lived  in  adjoin 
ing  counties,  they  were  doubtless  personally 
acquainted  with  one  another." 

If  this  were  true,  Mary  Ball  recognized 
the  sufferer  as  one  who  had  other  claims 
upon  her  sympathies  besides  those  of  a 
common  nationality. 

As  Wessyngtons,  Weshingtons,  Wassing- 
tons,  and  Washingtons,  his  ancestors  had 


28    THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

played  a  conspicuous  part  in  English  his 
tory  since  the  Conquest.  One  of  them  —  a 
baronet  —  had  married  a  half-sister  of  George 

o 

Villiers,  Duke  of  Buckingham  ;  another  had 
served  under  Prince  Rupert  at  Worcester. 
So  stubborn  was  their  loyalty  to  the  Stuarts 
that  two  younger  brothers  of  Sir  William 
Washington,  Buckingham's  brother-in-law, 
sailed  for  America  during  the  Protectorate, 
preferring  expatriation  and  the  hardships 
of  colonial  life  to  ease  and  plenty  under 
regicide  rule. 

These  were  John  and  Laurence  Wash 
ington,  names  repeated  so  often  in  the 
family  genealogy  that  strict  attention  to 
chronology  is  necessary  if  we  would  avoid 
confusion  of  successive  generations.  Little 
is  known  of  them  prior  to  the  embarkation. 
John,  the  elder  and  wealthier  of  the  pair, 
was  a  Yorkshire  gentleman  living  quietly 
at  Cave  Castle,  a  manorial  seat  of  the  Wash- 
ingtons.  His  reputation  was  that  of  an 
energetic  man  with  decided  military  taste, 
if  not  genius.  The  more  scholarly  Lau 
rence  had  taken  an  Oxford  degree,  and  was 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON  29 

married  to  the  daughter  of  Sir  Hugh  Wal 
lace.  One  year  after  his  marriage  in  1655, 
the  brothers  left  their  native  land  in  com 
pany,  moved  by  some  fresh  impulse  of  dis 
gust  for  the  Cromwellian  administration, 
or  provoked  by  what  they  construed  into 
growth  of  tyranny.  The  popular  belief  is 
that  they  settled  upon  adjoining  estates  in 
Westmoreland,  which  is  separated  by  Rich 
mond  County  from  Lancaster.  Having 
brought  wealth  with  them,  they  were  soon 
eminent  among  the  successful  men  of  the 


region. 


If  Laurence's  lands  originally  joined  those 
of  his  brother  he  soon  removed  to  Rappa- 
hannock  County,  where  his  will  was  re 
corded  in  1675.  John's  was  made,  as  by 
concert,  in  the  same  year,  and  both  were 
admitted  to  probate  in  January,  1677,  one 
upon  the  6th,  the  other  upon  the  loth  of 
the  month,  as  if  in  their  deaths  they  had 
not  been  long  divided.  These  instruments 
breathe  the  spirit  of  exalted  piety  character 
istic  of  the  earlier  American  branches  of 
the  Washington  family.  No  Roundhead 


3O    THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

exhorter  could  have  enunciated  sentiments 
more  evangelical  than  are  contained  in  the 
preamble  to  the  last  will  and  testament  of 
George  Washington's  great-grandfather :  — 

"  Being  heartily  sorry  from  the  bottom  of 
my  heart  for  my  sins  past,  most  humbly  de 
siring  forgiveness  of  the  same  from  the  Al 
mighty  God,  my  Saviour  and  Redeemer,  in 
whom  and  by  the  merits  of  Jesus  Christ  I 
trust  and  believe  assuredly  to  be  saved,  and 
to  have  full  remission  and  forgiveness  of  all 
my  sins,  and  that  my  soul  with  my  body  at 
the  general  resurrection  shall  rise  again 
with  joy  "  —  is  the  language  of  triumphant 
faith.  He  "hopes,"  moreover,  in  good  Cal- 
vinistic  phrase,  "  through  the  merits  of 
Jesus  Christ's  death  and  passion  to  possess 
and  inherit  the  kingdom  of  heaven  prepared 
for  His  elect  and  chosen." 

His  fortune,  which  "  it  has  pleased  God 
to  give  him  far  above  his  deserts,"  was 
large,  and  was  divided  between  his  wife  and 
three  children,  John,  Laurence,  and  Anne. 
Much  of  it  was  in  the  great  staple  of  the 
region,  tobacco.  Four  thousand  weight 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  31 

were  devised  to  the  rector  of  the  church,  in 
which  he  orders  that  a  tablet  containing  the 
Ten  Commandments  shall  be  set  up  as  his 
memorial  stone.  One  thousand  pounds  ster 
ling  were  left  to  his  wife's  brother,  Thomas 
Pope,  and  the  same  sum  and  four  thousand 
weight  of  tobacco  to  a  sister  who  was  on 
the  eve  of  emigrating  to  America.  Prop 
erty  in  England  is  included  among  the  be 
quests.  His  wife,  Anne  Pope,  and  his 
brother  Laurence  were  his  executors.  He 
had  lived  in  the  land  of  his  adoption  eigh 
teen  years  when  an  invasion  of  the  Seneca 
Indians  was  made  upon  the  colony,  and 
John  Washington  was  put  in  command  of 
the  forces  hastily  collected  to  oppose  the 
savages.  He  was  successful,  and  received 
a  colonel's  commission  in  recognition  of 
the  signal  service  rendered  the  menaced 
provinces.  The  parish  in  which  he  lived 
was  named  for  him,  and  at  the  time  of  his 
death  he  was  commander-in-chief  of  the 
Northern  Neck. 

The  parallel  between  his  character,  his 
achievements,  —  even  the  honors  paid  him 


32    THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

and  the  titles  conferred,  —  and  those  of  his 
great  descendant  is  too  striking  to  be  ig 
nored  by  the  thoughtful  student  of  history. 

His  son  Laurence  married  Mildred,  daugh 
ter  of  Colonel  Augustine  Warner,  a  prom 
inent  freeholder  of  Gloucester.  They  had 
two  sons,  —  John,  named  for  his  paternal, 
and  Augustine  for  his  maternal  grandfather. 

This  rapid  review  of  the  history  of  the 
three  generations  immediately  preceding 
the  birth  of  our  first  President  is  inter 
esting  in  significance  to  the  believers  in  he 
reditary  transmission  of  moral  and  mental 
traits.  If,  as  Emerson  has  it,  "  Man  is 
physically,  as  well  as  metaphysically,  a  thing 
of  shred  and  patches,  borrowed  unequally 
from  good  and  bad  ancestors,"  it  will  be 
seen  that  there  was  abundance  of  superfine 
material  for  the  outfit  of  the  coming  man  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  that  the  cardi 
nal  virtues  of  patriotism,  courage,  temper 
ance,  thrift,  justice  to  man  and  faith  in  God, 
which  were  constituents  of  the  Washington's 
greatness,  were  the  more  stanch  for  a  cen 
tury's  seasoning  by  the  time  they  fell  to  him 


CHAPTER    III. 

AUGUSTINE,  the  second  son  of  Laurence 
Washington  and  Mildred  Warner  his  wife, 
was  born  in  Westmoreland  County,  Vir 
ginia,  in  1694,  probably  upon  the  planta 
tion  to  which  he  afterward  succeeded  as 
proprietor.  It  is  washed  upon  one  side 
by  Bridge's  Creek,  and  upon  the  other  by 
Pope's  Creek,  small  rivers  that  run  into  the 
Potomac.  The  homestead  stood  not  far 
from  their  junction  with  the  greater  stream. 
The  lesser  watercourses  form  two  sides  of 
a  truncated  triangle,  within  which  lay  the 
fertile  patrimonial  acres.  The  early  life  of 
Laurence  Washington's  sons  was  doubtless 
that  of  the  well-born,  well-endowed  colonial 
youths  of  the  period.  They  were  trained 
in  military  exercises,  hunted  deer,  foxes,  wild 
turkeys  and  ducks,  danced  well,  and  had 
such  theoretical  knowledge  of  husbandry 
as  qualified  them  to  manage  the  overseers 
who  would  manage  their  plantations. 


34     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

Augustine  must  have  come  into  posses 
sion  of  his  property  in  his  nonage,  for  he 
married  at  twenty-one  Jane,  the  daughter 
of  Caleb  Butler,  Esq.,  whose  lands  skirted 
Bridge's  Creek.  The  young  couple  lived 
together  for  thirteen  years,  during  which 
time  three  sons,  and  the  one  daughter  that 
almost  seems  to  have  been  the  rule  in  the 
Washington  family,  were  born  to  them. 
The  baby-girl  was  christened  by  the  mo 
ther's  name,  but  did  not  outlive  early  in 
fancy.  In  November,  1728,  the  mother 
went  to  join  her  in  the  family  vault  near 
Bridge's  Creek.  At  the  age  of  thirty-four 
the  father  was  a  widower  with  the  care  of 
two  sons  of  tender  age  upon  him. 

His  second  wife  was  wont  to  describe 
him  as  a  stately  and  handsome  gentleman, 
and  contemporary  authorities  agree  that 
his  son  George  inherited  his  superb  phy 
sique  from  this  one  of  his  parents.  He 
was,  a  descendant  tells  us,  "  a  noble-look 
ing  man  of  distinguished  bearing,  with  fair, 
florid  complexion,  brown  hair  and  fine  gray 
eyes,"  and  in  the  prime  of  early  maturity 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON  35 

when  thrown  —  whether  literally  or  figura 
tively  matters  not  —  into  the  society  of  his 
whilome  compatriote,  Mary  Ball.  He  had 
gone  to  England,  it  is  said,  to  dispose  of 
certain  property  to  which  he  was  heir  by 
the  terms  of  his  grandfather's  will.  In 
1853  there  was  standing  in  Cookham,  Eng 
land,  a  large  walnut  tree,  which,  it  was  al 
leged,  was  set  out  as  a  sapling  by  Augus 
tine  Washington  "  while  a-waiting  to  find  a 
purchaser  for  his  property." 

It  is  singular  enough,  considering  the 
historical  and  social  consequence  of  the 
parties  concerned,  that  conjecture  and  oral 
tradition,  in  pretty  equal  proportions,  make 
up  the  sum  of  what  is  generally  accepted 
as  the  true  relation  of  the  circumstances 
attending  the  courtship  and  wedlock  of 
Washington's  father  and  mother.  The 
probabilities  are  all  in  favor  of  the  state 
ment  that  they  met  and  made  (or  renewed) 
in  England  the  acquaintanceship  that  ended 
so  auspiciously.  Mary  Ball  was  to  accom 
pany  her  brother  to  the  neighborhood  of 
London  in  1728-29.  Augustine  Washing- 


36     THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

ton  was  looking  after  his  English  estates  in 
1729.  What  more  natural  than  that  the 
rest  should  follow  ? 

While  President,  George  Washington 
supplied  by  request  to  an  English  heraldry 
office  a  genealogical  table  of  the  American 
branch  of  his  family.  He  wrote  there :  - 

"  Jane,  wife  of  Augustine,  died  November 
24,  1728,  and  was  buried  in  the  family  vault 
at  Bridge's  Creek.  Augustine  then  married 
Mary  Ball,  March  6,  1730." 

In  the  same  table  is  set  down  :  "  George, 
eldest  son  of  Augustine  by  the  second  mar 
riage,  was  born  in  Westmoreland  County? 

The  section  I  have  italicized  should  —  or 
so  an  unprejudiced  person  might  suppose 
—  settle  definitively  the  question  as  to 
George  Washington's  nationality.  Yet  one 
historian  speaks  of  it  as  "  a  mooted  point." 
Lossing,  after  quoting  from  the  genealog 
ical  table,  subjoins,  "  There  is  no  known 
official  record  that  can  solve  the  question," 
and  pamphlets  have  been  written  to  prove 
that  the  first  chief  magistrate  of  the  country 
severed  from  the  crown  by  his  efforts  was 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  37 

born  in  England.  It  cannot  be  overlooked 
that,  while  the  distinguished  son  is  silent  as 
to  the  place  of  the  marriage,  neither  hint 
ing  that  the  ceremony  was  performed  in 
England,  nor  asserting  that  it  took  place  in 
America,  he  is  explicit  as  to  his  birthplace, 
even  naming  the  county.  If  he  were  not 
prime  authority  upon  this  point,  especially 
when  he  sets  his  hand  to  a  formal  and  im 
portant  record,  to  what  "official  record" 
can  we  turn  ?  How  clear  was  his  under 
standing  of  date  and  circumstances  was 
further  displayed  in  an  entry  made  in  his 
mother's  Bible  in  his  own  handwriting 
when  he  was  a  lad  of  seventeen,  or  there 
abouts.  At  sixteen  he  was  one  of  Lord 
Fairfax's  surveyors,  and  earning  his  own 
living  among  men  double  his  age.  It 
is  altogether  unlikely  that  he  transcribed 
idly  or  ignorantly  what  is  still  to  be  read  in 
round,  careful  characters  in  the  volume 
faithfully  preserved  in  the  family:  — 

"  George  Washington,  Son  to  Augustine 
and  Mary  his  wife,  was  born  ye  nth  Day 
of  February  173-  about  10  in  the  morn- 


38    THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

ing  and  was  baptized  the  3th  of  April  fol 
lowing,  Mr.  Beverley  Whiting  &  Capt 
Christopher  Brooks,  Godfathers,  &  Mrs.  Mil 
dred  Gregory,  Godmother." 

It  ought  to  be  needless  to  call  attention 
to  the  extreme  improbability  that  one  so 
well  instructed  with  regard  to  the  very  hour 
of  the  birth,  the  time  of  baptism,  and  the 
names  of  the  sponsors,  should  err  as  to  the 
more  momentous  question,  On  which  side 
of  the  Atlantic  did  he  first  see  the  light? 
The  marvel  is  that  the  matter  should  ever 
have  been  debated. 

To  recapitulate  :  conflicting  legends  are 
most  easily  reconciled  by  acceptance  of 
Lossing's  hypothesis  that  the  contracting 
parties  were  married  in  England,  probably 
from  the  house  of  Mary  Ball's  only  surviv 
ing  near  kinsman,  and,  sailing  from  Eng 
land  within  the  year,  were  settled  in  the 
Westmoreland  homestead  between  Bridge's 
and  Pope's  creeks  before  their  first  child 
was  born.  Unfortunately,  the  marriage  and 
baptismal  registers  of  the  parish  church  at 
Cookham  were  destroyed  before  1853,  at 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  39 

which  time  investigation  of  this  matter  was 
made,  only  the  burial  register  having  been 
saved. 

Mrs.  Ella  Bassett  Washington,  a  lineal 
descendant  of  "  Betty "  Lewis,  Washing 
ton's  only  sister,  and  whose  husband  was  a 
grandnephew  of  the  great  chieftain,  echoes 
the  general  disappointment  of  biographical 
students  when  she  remarks  that,  "  Some 
thing  more  is  due  to  the  father  of  Washing 
ton  than  the  mere  mention  of  his  personal 
appearance."  Her  reference  to  "  careful  re 
views  of  Washington's  ancestry,  given  in 
Sparks's  and  Irving's  histories,  tracing  the 
family  for  six  centuries  in  England,"  hardly 
contents  those  to  whom  every  particular 
relating  to  the  antecedents  of  our  country's 
deliverer  is  fraught  with  intense  interest. 
Still  we  cannot  but  admire  the  grace  of  the 
evasion  with  which  Augustine  Washing 
ton's  very  great-indeed-granddaughter  would 
parry  useless  questionings :  - 

"  Returning  to  Mary  Ball's  marriage  and 
the  query,  '  Who  was  her  husband  ? '  no 
thing  could  be  more  emphatic  than  his  own 


40   THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

solemn  assertion  made  in  the  first  sentence 
of  his  last  will,  '  I,  Augustine  Washington, 
of  the  County  of  King  George,  Gentle 
man!  ' 

The  formula  in  this  individual  instance 
conveys  all  we  would  have  it  express  —  as 
far  as  it  goes,  but  it  goes  a  very  little  way. 
Every  planter  on  the  Northern  Neck,  or,  for 
that  matter,  east  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  used 
the  words  in  cognate  circumstances,  and 
the  probability  is  that  they  slipped  from  the 
notary's  pen  of  their  own  weight.  Com 
mon  sense  descries  a  stronger  proof  that  he 
was  the  worthy  sire  of  his  magnificent  son 
in  the  facts  that  John  Washington  was  his 
grandfather,  and  that  Mary  Ball  chose  him 
as  her  husband.  "  Good  blood  does  not 
lie,"  and  the  highest  praise  a  man  can  re 
ceive  is  the  love  and  trust  a  noble  woman 
reposes  in  him  when  she  lays  her  hand  in 
his  for  the  rest  of  their  united  lives.  Our 
favorable  judgment  of  the  successful  planter 
is  based  upon  association  and  upon  pre 
sumptive  evidence  rather  than  upon  direct 
information. 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  41 

Beyond  the  skeleton  history  which  the 
best  of  biographers  have  only  sufficed  to 
indicate,  not  to  sketch,  there  is  little  to  tell 
where  we  would  fain  relate  at  length.  How 

o 

little  is  betrayed  by  the  pertinacity  with 
which  relic-mad  posterity  reverts  (especially 
upon  the  22d  of  February,  N.  S.)  to  the 
mouldy  vestige  of  what  was,  when  new  and 
whole,  absurdly  insufficient  drapery  for  the 
frame  of  a  moral  lesson.  That  man  or 
woman  should  not  be  allowed  to  go  at  large 
who  dares,  in  the  age  that  now  is  and  to 
come,  to  tell  in  cold-blooded  seriousness  the 
story  of  the  hatchet  and  the  cherry-tree. 
The  memory  of  father  and  of  son  is  best 
honored  by  ignoring  in  toto  the  petty  trans 
action  in  lumber  that  has  made  both  ridicu 
lous,  and  turned  the  stomachs  of  thousands 
of  embryo  citizens  of  our  republic  against 
truth-telling. 

Descriptions  of  the  home  to  which  the 
well-to-do  widower  brought  the  bride  who 
was  ten  years  his  junior  are  happily  suffi 
ciently  full  to  aid  us  in  arranging  the  set 
ting  for  our  heroine's  new  "  cast."  The 


42    THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

blunted  point  of  the  triangle  formed  by  the 
creeks  that  furnished  fat  low-grounds  on 
two  sides  of  Augustine  Washington's  plan 
tation  of  Wakefield  rested  upon  the  Poto 
mac,  and  was  a  mile  in  width.  Wakefield 
comprised  a  thousand  acres  of  as  fine  wood 
and  bottom  lands  as  were  to  be  found  in  a 
county  "  that  by  reason  of  the  worth,  tal 
ents,  and  patriotism  that  adorned  it  was 
called  'the  Athens  of  Virginia.'"  The 
house  faced  the  Potomac,  the  lawn  sloping 
to  the  bank  between  three  and  four  hun 
dred  yards  distant  from  the  "  porch,"  run 
ning  from  corner  to  corner  of  the  dwelling. 
There  were  four  rooms  of  fair  size  upon 
the  first  floor,  the  largest  in  a  one-story  ex 
tension  at  the  back,  being  "  the  chamber." 
The  hip-roof  above  the  main  building  was 
pierced  by  dormer-windows  that  lighted  a 
large  attic.  At  each  end  of  the  house  was 
a  chimney  built  upon  the  outside  of  the 
frame  dwelling,  and  of  dimensions  that, 
made  the  latter  seem  disproportionately 
small.  Each  cavernous  fireplace  would 
hold  a  half  cord  of  wood,  and  the  leaping 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  43 

blaze  had  all  seasons  for  its  own  in  a  region 
where  river  fogs  at   evening    and   morning 
were  vehicles   of    the   dreaded    "  ague  and 
fever."     About   the  fireplace  in   the  parlor 
were  the  blue  Dutch  tiles  much  affected  in 
the   decorative    architecture    of    the    time. 
What  a  priceless  scrap   of  bric-a-brac  to  a 
modern    collector   would    be    one  of   those 
same  enameled  squares,  bedight  with  a  rep 
resentation  of  Abrahams  Offering,  or  Moses 
Breaking  the  Tables  of  the  Law,  the  tents 
of    Israel,  like  a   row    of    sharp    haystacks, 
almost  touching  his  knees,  although  osten 
sibly  dwarfed  in  perspective  until  the  whole 
camp  was  smaller  than  the  tablets  he  hurled 
to   earth !  —  the    tiles    that    once    reflected 
rosily  the  thoughtful  face  of  the  young  wife, 
and  gave  distorted   images  of    the   blonde 
giant,  her  nominal  lord  and  master ;   that, 
by  and    by,   missed   the    musing   face    and 
slighter  figure  for  a  time,  and  then  showed 
a    double    picture,  —  a    visage    paler    and 
sweeter  than  of  old,  bent  over  the  baby  that 
was,  from   the  beginning,  the  image  of  his 
mother.      In   the  one-storied    chamber  the 


44   THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

Moses  of  the  New  World  was  born,  and  the 
mother  nursed  the  goodly  child  upon   her 
bosom  in  gladness  and  pride  of  heart  until 
the  birth  of  the  little  Betty  in  June,  1733. 
Between     the     stepmother    and    the    two 
sturdy  sons  of  Mr.  Washington's  first  mar 
riage  there  existed  cordial   frendliness  from 
the  hour  of  her  installation    as  mistress  of 
the    modest    mansion.       An    elderly   kins 
woman   had    cared   for  them    during    their 
father's    protracted    absence,   but  with    the 
recollection  of  their  own  mother,  hardly  two 
years  dead,  in  their  memories,  it  spoke  well 
for  the  little  fellows,  as  for  the  new  mother, 
that  they  yielded  her  respectful  duty.     Her 
early  life  had  made  every  detail  of  country 
housekeeping  familiar  to  her.     The  retinue 
of  servants  was  perhaps  larger  than  that  at 
Epping  Forest  had  been,  and  the  appoint 
ments  of  the  house  may  have  included  rel 
ics   of  such    grand   living   as    had  befitted 
Cave  Castle,  and  went  well  with  the  stories, 
told   over   the    logs    on    winter   nights,    of 
court-visits  and  royal  preferment.    Apostles 
of    Democracy,    though    the    Washingtons 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON  45 

called  themselves,  they  were  ingrain  aristo 
crats,  —  the  greatest  of  them  not  excepted. 
It  was  impossible  for  them  then,  as  now,  to 
forget  the  august  procession  of  warriors 
and  scholars  who  had  borne  high  in  peace 
and  in  war  the  emblem  of  the  closed  visor, 
the  ducal  coronet  capped  by  a  soaring  ra 
ven,  and  the  motto,  pregnant  with  prophecy, 
—  "  Excitus  act  a  probat" 

The  one  tragical  incident  in  this  chapter 
of  Mary  Washington's  wedded  life  —  a  tale 
of  tranquil  happiness,  Arcadian  in  simpli 
city  and  beauty — was  the  violent  death  of 
a  girl  visitor,  an  intimate  friend  of  the  mis 
tress  of  the  manor.  The  two  women  were 
sitting  at  supper  together  while  a  thunder 
storm  was  raging,  thoughtless  of  fear  or 
danger,  when  a  flash  of  lightning  struck 
the  young  girl,  melting  the  knife  and  fork 
in  her  hand,  and  killing  her  instantly.  The 
nervous  shock  left  ineffaceable  traces  upon 
the  strong  mind  of  Mrs.  Washington.  Cour- 
.ageous  at  all  other  times,  she  grew  pale 
and  sick  at  the  approach  of  a  thunder-storm, 
and  at  the  first  roll  and  gleam  of  the  deadly 


46   THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

elements  sought  her  own  room  or  sat  with 

^j 

closed  eyes  and  folded  hands,  absorbed  in 
silent  prayer  while  it  lasted.  The  electrical 
play  restored  in  all  its  vividness  the  scene 
photographed  by  that  scathing  "  flash  light " 
upon  brain  and  heart. 

Mrs.  Ella  Bassett  Washington  recounts 
that,  "  On  one  occasion  the  daughter,  miss 
ing  her  mother,  and  knowing  how  she  suf 
fered,  found  her  kneeling  by  the  bed  with 
her  face  buried  in  the  pillows,  praying. 
Upon  rising,  she  said,  '  I  have  been  striv 
ing  for  years  against  this  weakness,  for  you 
know,  Betty,  my  trust  is  in  God ;  but 
sometimes  my  fears  are  stronger  than  my 
faith.'  " 

The  Wakefield  library  was  small,  a  straw 
of  circumstantial  evidence  in  support  of  the 
belief  that  the  tastes  of  the  handsome,  ath 
letic  master  were  not  intellectual.  It  was 
high  noon  of  the  Augustan  age  of  English 
literature,  and  the  Old  Dominion,  more 
than  any  other  colony,  was  a  faithful  reflec 
tion  of  what  went  on  in  the  mother-country. 
Mr.  Cooke's  picture  of  plantation  life  in  the 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  47 

eighteenth  century,  which  he  calls  "  The 
Golden  Age  of  Virginia,"  is  graphic  and 
beautiful :  — 

"  Care  seemed  to  keep  away  from  it  and 
stand  out  of  its  sunshine.  The  planter  in 
his  manor-house,  surrounded  by  his  family 
and  retainers,  was  a  feudal  patriarch,  mildly 
ruling  everybody.  He  drank  wholesome 
wine,  sherry  or  canary,  of  his  own  importa 
tion  ;  entertained  every  one  ;  held  great  fes 
tivities  at  Christmas,  with  huge  log-fires  in 
the  great  fireplaces  around  which  the  family 
clan  gathered  ;  and  everybody,  high  and  low, 
seemed  to  be  happy.  It  was  the  life  of 
the  family,  not  of  the  great  world,  and  pro 
duced  that  intense  attachment  for  the  soil 
which  had  become  proverbial ;  which  made 
a  Virginian  once  say,  '  If  I  had  to  leave 
Virginia,  I  would  not  know  where  to  go.' 
.  .  .  Such  luxuries  as  were  desired,  books, 
wines,  silks,  and  laces,  were  brought  from 
London  to  the  planter's  wharf  in  exchange 
for  his  tobacco  ;  and  he  was  content  to  pay 
well  for  all,  if  he  could  thereby  escape  liv 
ing  in  towns." 


48    THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

The  precedence  given,  in  the  list  of  luxu 
ries,  to  books  is  not  accidental.  William  Eve 
lyn  Byrd's  principality  of  Westover  was,  as 
the  crow  flies,  less  than  seventy  miles  from 
Wakefield,  and  the  stately  suzerain's  pro 
gresses  included  visits  to  the  Rappahannock 
plantations  and  the  cultivation  of  social  re 
lations  with  his  brother  magnates.  The 
Byrd  library  was  the  finest  in  America,  the 
owner  the  most  accomplished  man  on  this 
side  of  the  sea,  and  there  were  few  on  the 
other  side  whose  learning  exceeded  his. 
The  Virginia  planters  and  their  families 
were  usually  omnivorous  readers,  and  every 
country-house  held  a  choice  collection  of 
classics  to  which  every  year  brought  ad 
ditions.  The  masters  of  English  essay  and 
song  were  as  well  known  in  the  new  as  in 
the  old  country ;  the  portraits  hung  against 
whitewashed  and  wainscoted  walls  were 
by  Hudson  and  Kneller  and  Vandyke ; 
gentlemen  and  gentlewomen  read  together, 
with  proper  emphasis  and  discretion,  the 
Beggars  Opera,  and  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,  and  Paradise  Lost,  in  country-houses 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  49 

in  rainy  weather,  and  got  up  masquerades 
and  private  theatricals  at  Christmas,  and 
made  polite  talk  of  "  Shakespeare  and  the 
musical  glasses  "  as  airily  as  did  the  belles 
and  gallants  of  court  circles  in  the  mother 
land  they  never  forgot. 

All  this  being  true,  the  fact  that  the 
bookshelves  in  the  room  with  the  Dutch- 
tiled  chimney-piece  held  few  except  devo 
tional  works,  while  gratifying  proof  that  the 
religious  faith  of  the  fathers  had  descended 
to  the  third  and  fourth  generations,  implies 
that  the  robust  intellect  of  the  wife  was  not 
likely  to  be  lured  to  higher  flights  by  the 
husband's  example.  The  thrifty  planter 
had  set  a  thrifty  wife  and  mistress  over  the 
Westmoreland  home.  Whatever  may  be 
said  of  him,  it  is  certain  that  she  left  upon 
everything  she  handled  the  stamp  of  a  vig 
orous  personality.  One  biographer  relates, 
casually,  and  not  consciously  in  evidence  of 
this,  that  one  of  the  volumes  in  the  Wake- 
field  library  —  Sir  Matthew  Hales  Con 
templations,  Moral  and  Divine  —  had  be 
longed  to  her  predecessor  Jane,  and  bore 


50   THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

upon  the  fly-leaf  the  signature  of  the  first 
wife.  Directly  beneath  this,  the  second  put 
in  her  reversionary  claim  in  full  by  inscrib 
ing  "  and  Mary  Washington  "  in  characters 
that  have  a  dogged  assertiveness  of  their 
own  to  the  imagination  of  the  amused 
reader.  Jane,  nee  Butler,  had  had  her  day 
and  opportunity.  She  had  done  with  earthly 
belongings  and  helps.  Mary  wanted  all  the 
room  she  could  get  for  growth  and  action. 

This  volume,  worn  by  many  readings 
and  defaced  —  or  embellished  —  by  numer 
ous  marginal  pencilings,  was  treasured  by 
George  Washington  as  long  as  he  lived. 
One  chapter,  which  we  may  fancy  to  our 
selves  the  mother  reading  aloud  to  her  sons 
on  the  many  Sundays  when  there  was  no 
service  in  the  parish  church,  is  entitled  — 
Of  the  Vanity  and  Vexation  which  ariscth 
from  Worldly  Hope  and  Expectation.  It 
was  a  lesson  she  had  learned  by  heart  be 
fore  she  sat  down  in  Jane  Washington's 
place,  or  wrote  her  name  beneath  that 
traced  by  the  fingers  now  mouldering  in 
the  vault  on  Bridge's  Creek. 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON    51 

We  note  with  respect,  not  unmixed  with 
awe,  that  the  essay  The  Great  Audit,  — 
the  solemn  searching  of  heart  and  summing 
up  of  and  for  himself  of  England's  great 
and  good  chief-justice, — was  used  by  the 
mother  as  a  lesson  to  be  committed  to 
memory  by  her  children.  What  pious  pre 
science  dictated  for  her  eldest  boy  a  study 
that  closes  with  these  words  ?  — 

"  When  Thy  honor,  or  the  good  of  my 
country  was  concerned,  I  then  thought  it 
was  a  seasonable  time  to  lay  out  my  repu 
tation  for  the  advantage  of  either,  and  to 
act  with  it,  and  by  it,  and  upon  it,  to  the 
highest,  in  the  use  of  all  lawful  means. 
And  upon  such  an  occasion,  the  counsel  of 
Mordecai  to  Esther  was  my  encourage 
ment  :  '  Who  knoweth  whether  God  hath  not 
given  thee  this  reputation  and  esteem  for 
such  a  time  as  this  ? ' 

Baby  Betty  was  but  sixteen  months  old 
when,  in  November,  1734,  a  second  son 
(Samuel)  was  added  to  the  household 
group.  Upon  a  windy  April  day  in  the 
following  year,  sparks  were  carried  from  a 


52     THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

burning  brush-heap  in  the  garden  to  the 
tinder-like  shingles  of  the  roof,  which  was 
in  flames  before  the  mishap  was  discovered. 
Mr.  Washington  was  absent,  and  when 
satisfied  that  the  efforts  made  by  the  negro 
men  to  save  the  building  would  be  useless, 
the  mistress  set  the  example  to  the  women 
of  bringing  out  the  furniture,  clothing,  and 
other  articles  of  value  and  carrying  them  to 
a  place  of  safety.  This  done,  without  wast 
ing  time  in  lamentation  over  the  loss  of 
the  first  home  of  her  married  life,  she  called 
all  hands  to  assist  in  making  up  beds  and 
getting  supper  ready  in  the  kitchen,  —  a 
mere  cabin  that  had  not  been  seized  upon 
by  the  flames. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

INSTEAD  of  rebuilding  upon  the  site  of 
the  burnt  homestead,  Augustine  Wash 
ington  removed  his  family  and  household 
effects  to  a  plantation  he  owned  in  Stafford 
County.  It  was  upon  the  Rappahannock 
River,  and  opposite  the  town  of  Fredericks- 
bui'2%  The  situation  was  commanding,  and 

C5  O' 

the  garden  and  orchard  were  in  better  cul 
tivation  than  those  they  had  left.  The 
house  was,  like  that  at  Wakefield,  broad 
and  low,  with  the  same  number  of  rooms 
upon  the  ground  floor,  one  of  them  in  the 
shed-like  extension  at  the  back,  and  the 
spacious  attic  was  over  the  main  building. 
Even  the  great  chimneys  were  upon  the 
same  plan  and  of  like  proportions  with 
those  marking  the  spot  where  the  older 
house  had  stood.  The  place  was  called  by 
the  family  "  Pine  Grove,"  from  a  noble 
body  of  these  trees  near  it,  but  was  better 


54      THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

known  in  the  surrounding  country  as  "  Ferry 
Farm."  .There  was  then  no  bridge  over 
the  Rappahannock,  and  communication  was 
had  with  the  town  by  the  neighboring 
ferry. 

The  Washingtons'  church  connection  was 
with  Overwharton  Parish.  In  Bishop 
Meade's  chapter  upon  this  we  have  an  in 
teresting  letter  from  Hon.  Peter  V.  Daniel, 
then  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court,  written 
in  1855,  which  contains  the  only  printed 
memorandum  I  have  been  able  to  find  of 
"  Hannah  Ball,  half-sister  of  Mary  Ball,  the 
mother  of  General  George  Washington." 
According  to  the  distinguished  jurist,  who 
assuredly  should  have  known  whereof  he 
wrote,  she  married  his  great-grandfather 
Rowleigh  (sic)  Travers,  "  one  of  the  most 
extensive  landed  proprietors  in  that  part  of 
the  country,  and  from  them  proceeded  a 
long  line  of  descendants."  Judge  Daniel  re 
marks  in  conclusion,  of  Overwharton  Parish 
which  covered  the  narrow  county  of  Staf 
ford,  that  "  the  space  of  some  eight  or  ten 
miles  square  comprised  none  but  substan- 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     55 

tial  people,  some  of  them  deemed  wealthy 
in  their  day,  several  of  them  persons  of 
education,  polish,  and  refinement." 

Following  the  interesting  clue  thus  of 
fered,  I  have  been  so  fortunate  as  to  obtain 
from  a  living  representative  of  the  Daniel 
family  a  few  additional  and  charmingly  sug 
gestive  particulars  relative  to  Mrs.  Wash 
ington's  near  kinswoman. 

"  Hannah  Ball  was  a  half-sister  of  Mary 
Washington,  and  married  Raleigh  Travers 
(said  to  have  been  of  the  same  blood  as  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh).  The  daughter  of  Han 
nah  (Ball)  Travers  married  Peter  Daniel. 
Their  daughter,  Hannah  Daniel,  it  is  said, 
once  danced  with  General  Washington, 
who  gallantly  expressed  his  pleasure  at 
finding  that  he  had  such  a  pretty  cousin." 

The  knowledge  that  Mrs.  Washington  in 
her  new  abode  was  in  the  same  parish  with 
her  half-sister,  and  of  Mrs.  Travers's  stand 
ing  as  wife  of  the  American  founder  of  a 
family  distinguished  in  the  later  history  of 
Virginia  for  breeding,  learning,  and  elo 
quence,  casts  a  pleasing  light  upon  the  mo- 


56      THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

tives  that  may  have  caused  the  removal  of 
Augustine  Washington  to  Stafford.  Much 
happiness  must  have  come  to  his  wife 
through  this  step.  She  dwelt  once  more 
among  her  own  people.  Her  attachments 
were  powerful,  as  is  often  the  case  with 
natures  that  are  reckoned  undemonstrative 
by  casual  acquaintances.  The  rupture,  one 
after  another,  of  the  ties  that  bound  her  to 
the  home  of  her  childhood  knit  but  the 
more  firmly  the  few  that  remained. 

The  newer,  sweeter  bonds  of  mother 
hood  \vere  increased  by  the  birth  of  John 
Augustine  Washington,  in  January,  1736; 
and  of  Charles,  in  May,  1738.  Close  upon 
his  heels,  in  1739,  came  a  second  baby- 
daughter,  a  joyful  apparition  after  the  suc 
cessive  advents  of  three  boys.  Mildred, 
named  for  the  aunt  who  had  stood  sponsor 
for  George,  died  when  about  fourteen 
months  old,  and  Betty,  now  a  winsome 
maid  of  seven,  remained  thenceforward  the 
only  daughter. 

Before  the  ache  in  the  mother's  heart 
was  dulled  by  time,  the  crowning  grief  of 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     $? 

her  life  fell  upon  her.  Augustine  Wash 
ington,  like  many  other  gentlemen  of  his 
day  and  habits,  had  suffered  vicariously  for 
the  high  living  of  his  ancestors  in  repeated 
attacks  of  rheumatic  gout.  One  is  re 
minded  that  disregard  of  weather  which 
prudent  men  would  not  brave  is  also,  some 
times,  hereditary,  in  reading  that  he  con 
tracted  his  last  illness,  as  his  more  illustri 
ous  son  fifty-six  years  afterward  tempted 
his,  by  riding  over  his  plantation  for  sev 
eral  hours  in  a  cold  rain-storm.  In  both 
cases,  Nature's  retribution  was  quick  and 
awful.  During  the  night  succeeding  his 
exposure,  Mr.  Washington  was  racked  by 
excruciating  pains,  and  with  morning  in 
flammation  set  in.  In  a  week  he  died. 

"Augustine  Washington  Departed  this  life 
ye  1 2th  day  of  April,  1743,  aged  49  years," 
is  the  last  record  upon  the  page  that  gives 
in  brief  the  history  of  the  joint  life  bounded 
by  the  wedding  and  the  death  day. 

They  took  him  back  to  Westmoreland 
County,  and  laid  him  in  the  vault  upon 
Bridge's  Creek. 


58      THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

It  is  in  keeping  with  the  apathy  that  pre 
vails  throughout  the  Southern,  and  in  some 
of  the  Middle  States,  with  respect  to  the 
last  resting-places  of  those  whom  family 
and  friends  delighted  to  honor  while  living, 
that  the  Washington  vault  should  to-day  be 
as  neglected  and  almost  as  undistinguishable 
from  the  surrounding  fields  as  is  the  birth 
place  of  George  Washington.  Forty  years 
ago  it  was  described  as  "  in  an  open  field, 
and  uninclosed.  A  small  space  around  it 
is  covered  with  grass,  briers,  shrubs,  and  a 
few  small  trees.  Itself  can  only  be  dis 
tinguished  by  the  top  of  the  brick  arch 
which  rises  a  little  above  the  surface.  The 
cavity  underneath  has  been  very  properly 
filled  up  with  earth  to  prevent  the  bones  of 
the  dead  from  being  taken  away  by  visitors 
who  had  thus  begun  to  pillage  it." 

In  reading  this  we  must  not  forget  that 
the  family  vault  was  reckoned  a  safe  and  a 
sacred  repository  for  the  precious  dust  com 
mitted  to  it  when  Mary  Washington  buried 
her  dead  out  of  her  sight  and,  returning  to 
the  house  thus  suddenly  bereft  of  the  head, 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON      5Q 

gathered  the  fatherless  children  about  her, 
and  took  up  with  both  hands  life  as  God 
had  made  it  for  her.  She  was  thirty-seven 
years  of  age.  Those  who  maintain  that  the 
circumstances  of  her  widowhood  moulded 
her  character  and  habits,  developing  latent 
germs  of  intelligence  and  judgment,  leave 
the  matter  of  age  out  of  sight.  She  was 
too  mature  to  be  put  to  school,  even  by 
affliction.  What  she  was  as  the  guardian 
of  her  husband's  children  and  comptroller 
of  his  estates  she  had  been  before  she  was 
left  alone.  Association  with  him  may  have 
been  a  goodly  staff ;  it  was  never  a  crutch. 
According  to  the  reports  of  various  contem 
poraries,  she  sustained  her  bereavement 
with  Christian  fortitude.  One  writer  re 
cords  that  "  she  submitted  to  the  Divine 
Will  with  the  strength  of  a  philosopher  and 
the  trustfulness  of  a  Christian.  .  .  .  She 
seemed  alike  indifferent  to  the  smitings  of 
affliction  and  the  tenderness  of  human  sym 
pathy.  Above  all  the  tumult  of  emotion 
she  heard  the  commands  of  Duty,  and 
obeyed  them." 


60      THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

Others  recount  likewise  the  story  that 
with  the  assumption  of  her  weeds,  features 
and  bearing  took  on  gravity  and  decision 
that  never  left  them.  There  were  five  of 
her  own  children,  —  all  under  twelve  years 
of  age,  whose  guardian  she  was  made  by 
the  terms  of  her  husband's  will.  One 
clause  of  this  instrument  provokes  us  to  a 
smile,  chased  away  by  a  thoughtful  frown :  — 

"  It  is  my  will  that  my  said  four  sons' 
estates  may  be  left  in  my  wife's  hand  until 
they  respectively  attain  the  age  of  Twenty 
One  years,  in  case  my  said  wife  continues  so 
long  unmarried? 

Frankly,  we  wish  the  thrifty  planter  who 
understood  so  well  how  to  make  and  to 
keep  money,  and  who  had  presumably 
trained  the  wife  so  much  his  junior  in  like 
wisdom,  had  left  out  this  proviso.  Should 
she,  his  discreet  relict,  at  thirty-seven,  imi 
tate  the  example  he,  when  three  years 
younger  than  that,  had  set  her,  he  should 
have  been  sure  enough,  after  thirteen  years 
of  wedded  trustfulness,  of  her  sense  of  jus 
tice  and  her  integrity,  if  not  of  her  maternal 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     6 1 

love,  to  confide  the  material  interests  of  their 
boys  to  her  hands.  Let  us  hope  that  the 
grave-faced  widow  was  as  indifferent  to  the 
condition  as  she  appeared  to  be.  The  sec 
ond  marriages  of  her  own  father  and  of  her 
children's  father  may  have  accustomed  her 
to  contemplate  these  as  probable  contin 
gencies,  and  reason  may  have  arisen  so 
far  above  sentimentality  as  to  lead  her  to 
applaud  the  sagacity  of  her  long-sighted 
spouse.  The  will  was,  in  the  main,  equi 
table,  and  devised  specifically  more  property 
than  most  of  his  acquaintances  had  sup 
posed  the  testator  to  possess.  The  family 
had  lived  comfortably,  but  hardly  luxuri 
ously;  extravagance  was  opposed  to  the 
principles  of  both  husband  and  wife.  The 
broad  vein  of  thrift  and  the  economical 
instincts  that  characterized  the  business 
dealings  of  their  son  George  were  as  much 
an  inheritance  as  his  incorruptible  integrity. 
To  Laurence  Washington,  a  splendid 
young  fellow  of  twenty -six,  made  by  his 
father's  death  the  head  of  the  family,  was  be 
queathed  a  larger  fortune  than  to  any  other 


62      THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

of  the  heirs.  To  him  fell  the  fine  estate 
of  Hunting  Creek,  —  a  name  he  afterward 
changed  to  "  Mount  Vernon,"  in  compli 
ment  to  a  British  admiral.  It  lay  along  the 
Potomac  River,  and  contained  twenty-five 
hundred  acres.  The  fisheries  connected 
with  it  were  exceedingly  valuable  and  the 
lands  fertile.  He  received  other  real  estate, 
and  shares  in  the  iron-works  established  by 
Governor  Spotswoode  and  his  brother-capi 
talists.  Augustine  had  Wakefield  and  Hey- 
wood  in  Westmoreland.  The  Stafford 
property,  including  Pine  Grove,  fell  to 
George ;  Samuel,  John,  and  Charles  had 
about  seven  hundred  acres  apiece,  a  toler 
able  portion  for  younger  brothers.  Betty's 
fortune  was  principally  in  money  well-in 
vested.  The  entire  income  of  the  five  chil 
dren  Mary  Ball  had.borne  him  was  subject 
to  her  management  during  their  minority. 

Her  only  adviser  in  America  was  her 
step-son  Laurence.  The  two  were  always 
firm  friends,  each  recognizing  the  sterling 
worth  of  the  other.  With  genuine  good 
sense  and  feeling  the  second  wife  trained 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     63 

her  own  children  to  look  up  to  him  as  their 
father's  representative,  and  his  business  con 
ferences  with  her  were  as  with  another  man. 
In  her  home  she  required  no  backing.  Her 
will  was  law,  her  rules  were  a  code  from 
which  there  was  no  appeal.  Life  at  Pine 
Grove  differed  little  from  what  it  had  been 
in  the  father's  day,  except  that  the  mother 
superintended  the  plantation  work  as  well 
as  that  within  doors.  Nearly  everything 
used  upon  the  place  was  likewise  raised 
and  manufactured  there.  Cotton  was  then 
extensively  cultivated  in  Virginia.  It  was 
gathered,  spun,  and  woven  under  the  mis 
tress's  eyes,  the  tedious  process  of  picking 
out  the  seed  being  performed  by  the  negro 
children.  Wool  was  also  a  staple  of  the 
region,  and  every  stage  of  the  preparation 
of  the  fleece  passed  under  the  same  vigi 
lance, —  washing,  carding,  spinning,  and 
weaving  into  linsey-woolsey  and  stouter 
fabrics.  Flax  was  raised,  but  in  small 
quantities,  and  the  little  wheels,  that  now 
take  their  place  among  the  curiosities  of 
our  parlors,  whirled  and  buzzed  under  the 


64     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

house-mother's  foot  when  the  heavier  tasks 
of  the  day  were  done.  The  garments  worn 
by  the  servants  and  the  every-day  clothes 
of  the  whites  were  cut  out  by  her,  or  un 
der  her  direction  by  seamstresses  she  had 
trained,  and  were  made  up  in  "  the  cham 
ber,"  where  she  sat,  like  Lucretia,  with  her 
maids  about  her.  Not  a  pound  of  sugar, 
or  lard,  not  a  quart  of  meal,  or  flour,  or 
molasses,  vinegar,  cider,  or  whiskey  was  con 
sumed  in  "  the  house,"  or  kitchen,  or  "  quar 
ters,"  that  had  not  been  weighed  or  mea 
sured  by  her.  All  commodities  were  kept 
under  lock  and  key,  and  her  key-basket  of 
stout  wickerwork,  lined  and  covered  with 
leather,  went  with  her  everywhere  but  to 
church.  On  Sundays  it  was  locked  up  in 
a  closet,  and  she  carried  the  closet  key  at 
her  girdle,  with  silver-handled  scissors,  pin 
cushion,  and  nutmeg  grater. 

Except  in  cases  of  dangerous  illness,  she 
was  physician  and  apothecary  whenever 
medical  aid  was  required  upon  the  planta 
tion  ;  head-nurse,  let  the  sufferer  be  her  own 
child,  or  a  field-hand  at  the  farthest  "  quar- 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    65 

ter,"  —  watching  for  whole  nights  together 
over  the  sick  or  dying,  and  administering 
every  dose  of  medicine  with  her  own  hands. 
The  pickling,  preserving,  and  potting  of  a 
private  family  was  a  formidable  undertaking 
a  century  before  "  canned  goods  "  were  put 
upon  the  market;  the  killing  and  curing 
season,  when  bacon  was  "  put  up  "  by  the 
thousand  and  tens  of  thousands  of  pounds, 
was  a  gigantic  enterprise  achieved  annually. 
All  these  concerns  in  all  their  details  the 
mistress  of  a  plantation  carried  upon  her 
mind.  The  negroes  were  no  better  than 
grown-up  children,  and  she  bore  their  cares 
and  assumed  the  responsibilities  of  their 
physical,  moral,  and  spiritual  condition. 

It  was  a  stern  period  in  domestic  govern 
ment,  —  and  what  wonder  ?  Children  feared, 
in  honoring  the  parents  who  had  well-nigh 
the  power  of  life  and  death  over  them.  The 
household  was  an  absolute  monarchy.  The 
child  who  seated  himself  in  the  presence 
of  mother  or  father,  unless  bidden  to  do  so, 
would  have  been  ordered  from  the  room  by 
the  one,  or  knocked  down  by  the  other. 


66      THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

He  spoke  when  spoken  to,  and  respectfully ; 
he  wore  what  was  put  upon  him,  and  until 
he  was  twenty-one  came  and  went  at  the 
parental  command,  as  mindlessly  as  a  ma 
chine.  It  is  not  true,  although  often  as 
serted,  that  the  system  of  slavery  was  re 
sponsible  for  this  state  of  affairs  at  the 
South.  In  Puritan  New  England  the  like 
prevailed,  and  with  greater  severity.  It  was 
the  temper  of  a  comparatively  rude  people, 
and  of  a  time  when  the  Old  Testament  was 
more  read  than  the  New.  The  process 
made  stout  wood  of  growing  natures  that 
were  not  too  delicate  to  endure  it.  If  the 
result  were  the  survival  of  the  fittest  the 
survivors  were  very  fit  for  the  work  of  the 
age  and  of  the  world. 

Laurence  Washington  was  married,  on 
the  i gth  of  the  July  succeeding  his  father's 
death,  to  Anne  Fairfax,  the  wedding  having 
been  postponed  in  consequence  of  that 
event.  The  bride's  father,  Hon.  William 
Fairfax,  was  the  master  of  Belvoir,  an  ele 
gant  estate  adjoining  Mount  Vernon,  which 
last-named  place  became  the  home  of  the 
newly  wedded  pair. 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   67 

The  influence  of  this  alliance  with  the 
Fairfaxes  upon  the  character  and  destiny 
of  George  Washington  was  great.  How 
wholesome  was  the  tendency  of  the  inti 
macy  that  grew  up  between  Laurence's 
father-in-law  and  the  promising  "  big  boy  " 
may  be  surmised  from  an  extract  of  a  let 
ter  introduced  here,  —  not  in  chronological 
sequence,  but  to  illustrate  the  nature  of  the 
counsels  given  by  the  older  of  the  friends, 
and  the  material  upon  which  these  wrought. 
Washington  was  at  the  age  of  twenty-two 
in  command  of  a  camp  at  Fort  Necessity, 
among  the  Alleghanies,  guarding  an  im 
portant  pass  against  the  French  and  Indi 
ans.  William  Fairfax  writes  to  him  as  to 
an  equal  and  coadjutor:  — 

"  I  will  not  doubt  your  having  public 
prayer  in  the  camp,  especially  when  the 
Indian  families  are  your  guests,  that  they, 
seeing  your  plain  manner  of  worship,  may 
have  their  curiosity  to  be  informed  why  we 
do  not  use  the  ceremonies  of  the  French, 
which,  being  well-explained  to  their  under 
standings,  will  more  and  more  dispose  them 


68    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

to  receive  our  baptism  and  unite   in  strict 
bonds  of  cordial  friendship." 

This  is  another  crevice-ray  that  strikes 
unexpectedly  across  the  subject  we  are  con 
sidering,  bringing  into  relief  that  which  we 
could  not  spare  without  doing  injustice  to 
the  harmonious  whole.  At  Laurence's  mar 
riage  and  removal  to  his  own  home,  the 
patriarchal  duty  of  saying  grace  at  meals 
and  reading  prayers  night  and  morning 
would  have  devolved  upon  the  next  eldest 
son.  Knowing,  as  we  do,  the  strict  rules 
that  guided  the  household  of  her  who  was 
henceforward  called  "  Madam  Washington," 
we  cannot  doubt  that  to  the  eleven-year-old 
boy  the  task  was  assigned,  and  that  it  was 
performed  with  solemn  decorum.  In  a 
treatise  upon  the  Religious  Opinions  and 
Character  of  Washington,  Rev.  E.  C.  Mc- 
Guire,  of  Fredericksburg,  invites  notice  to 
the  truth  that  the  child  was  baptized  "  at  a 
time  when  care  was  taken  to  instruct  the 
children  in  our  holy  religion,  according  to 
the  Scriptures  as  set  forth  in  the  standards 
of  the  Episcopal  Church,"  and  transcribes 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  69 

certain  passages  from  a  set  of  "  Resolu 
tions  "  drawn  up  privately  for  his  own  use 
by  Madam  Washington's  oldest  son  when 
but  thirteen  years  of  age.  One  is :  "  When 
you  speak  of  God  or  His  attributes,  let  it 
be  seriously,  in  reverence." 

Another:  "Labour  to  keep  alive  in  your 
heart  that  little  spark  of  celestial  fire  called 
conscience." 

Again :  "  Let  your  conversation  be  with 
out  malice  or  envy,  for  it  is  a  sign  of  a 
tractable  and  commendable  nature,  and  in 
all  causes  of-  passion  admit  reason  to  gov 
ern." 

Whether  this  code,  which  embraces  rules 
for  the  government  of  behavior  in  company, 
at  table,  and  in  business,  be  a  compilation 
from  various  (to  us)  unknown  sources,  or  — 
what  is  scarcely  credible  —  the  composition 
of  the  lad  himself,  it  is  a  remarkable  paper, 
as  betraying  depth  and  steadiness  of  charac 
ter  almost  unparalleled  in  one  of  his  years. 

From  birth,  the  imprint  of  the  stronger 
natured  parent  was  upon  her  firstborn, — 
the  man  she  felt  she  had  gotten  from  the 


70   THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

Lord.  He  was  emphatically,  although  not 
in  the  sentimental  significance  usually  at 
tached  to  the  phrase,  "  a  mother's  boy."  In 
later  years  he  expressed  his  appreciation  of 
this  vital  truth  in  blunt,  sincere  terms  he 
might  have  learned  from  herself.  "  All  that 
I  am  I  owe  to  my  mother "  is  one  of  the 
best-known  of  his  sayings. 

I  have  written  thus  far  to  little  purpose 
if  I  have  not  made  it  plain  that  this  wo 
man,  upon  whom  was  laid  the  charge  of 
an  immense  estate  and  the  education  of 
five  children,  had  no  store  of  what  are 
rated  as  polite  accomplishments.  What 
ever  may  have  been  the  promise  of  personal 
graces  in  her  comparatively  careless  youth, 
she  was  now  neither  brilliant  nor  hand 
some.  Life  was  a  terribly  earnest  matter 
with  her,  and  her  demeanor  showed  that 
she  felt  it  to  be  such.  She  had  never  been 
idle  or  self-indulgent.  After  her  husband's 
death  doubled  her  daily  duties  she  became 
a  proverb  for  incessant  diligence.  Every 
minute  of  her  waking  hours  was  filled  with 
a  specific  task.  Method  became  almost 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   7 1 

mania.  It  followed,  inevitably,  that  she 
was  a  strict  task-mistress,  disposed  to  be  as 
intolerant  of  indolence  as  of  sin.  Her 
carriage  was  upright,  her  manner  dignified; 
although  not  talkative,  she  expressed  her 
self  clearly  and  with  force,  and  her  choice 
of  words  would  have  done  credit  to  many  a 
queen  of  polite  society.  A  nephew  of  her 
husband  —  Laurence  Washington,  of  Cho- 
tank  —  writing  many  years  afterward  of  this 
period  of  her  life,  has  left  us  his  impres 
sions  of  his  uncle's  widow  :  — 

"  I  was  often  here  [at  Pine  Grove] 
with  George,  his  playmate,  schoolmate,  and 
young  man's  companion.  Of  the  mother,  I 
was  more  afraid  than  of  my  own  parents  ; 
she  awed  me  in  the  midst  of  her  kindness ; 
and  even  now,  when  time  has  whitened  my 
locks  and  I  am  the  grandfather  of  a  second 
generation,  I  could  not  behold  that  majestic 
woman  without  feelings  it  is  impossible  to 
describe." 

Another,  whose  opportunities  of  intimate 
acquaintance  with  her  disposition  and  hab 
its  were  ample,  has  recorded  that  "  there 


72    THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

was  a  plain  honesty  and  truth  about  her, 
peculiar  to  that  age,  and  which  has  been 
ill  exchanged  for  empty  professions  and  out 
ward  polish.  As  a  native  of  Virginia,  she 
was  hospitable  by  birthright,  and  always  re 
ceived  her  visitors  with  a  smiling  welcome; 
but  they  were  never  asked  to  stay  but  once, 
and  she  always  speeded  the  parting  guest 
by  affording  every  facility  in  her  power. 
She  possessed  all  those  domestic  habits  and 
qualities  which  confer  value  on  woman,  but 
had  no  desire  to  be  distinguished  by  other 
titles  than  those  of  a  good  wife  and  mother." 
To  this  date  belongs  the  story  of  the 
sorrel  colt  which  George,  probably  in  con 
scious  emulation  of  Alexander,  determined 
to  master.  The  experiment  ended  in  the 
death  of  the  fiery  young  horse,  who  broke  a 
blood-vessel  in  a  futile  attempt  to  dislodge 
the  lad  from  his  back.  It  so  chanced  that 
the  mother's  first  question  when  her  son 
and  his  companions  returned  to  the  house 
was  whether  or  not  they  had  seen  the  sorrel 
colt.  Mr.  Custis  and  Dr.  Lossing  have 
combined  to  thrust  a  speech  into  the  cul- 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON    73 

pritfs  mouth,  which  no  boy,  even  of  that 
stilted  day,  ever  delivered  as  an  impromptu  ; 
but  in  whatever  style  he  replied,  the  facts 
were  told,  promptly  and  squarely.  The 
widow  struggled  for  a  second  with  the  tem 
per  she  had  not  lost  in  passing  it  down  to 
her  child,  then  replied  to  the  effect  that  she 
was  sorry  the  horse  was  dead,  but  glad  that 
her  boy  had  spoken  the  truth. 

The  anecdote,  albeit  but  a  trifle  less 
threadbare  than  the  hatchet  myth,  is  a  rep 
resentative  incident,  and  not  to  be  omitted 
from  the  history  of  mother  or  son. 


CHAPTER   V. 

BROTHER  JOSEPH,  the  London  barrister, 
who  would  seem  to  have  been  masterful  by 
nature,  became  a  trifle  pragmatical  with  the 
advance  of  years,  a  foible  his  sister  did  not 
suspect,  or  which  she  was  willing  to  over 
look  in  consideration  of  his  relationship  to 
herself  and  the  guardianly  office  he  had 
once  held.  She  had  consulted  him  as  to 
the  terms  of  settlement  of  certain  accounts 
of  the  estate  with  Laurence  Washington  at 
the  time  of  her  step-son's  marriage,  and 
had  taken  his  advice,  which  was  wise  and 
just.  She  applied  to  him  for  counsel  in  a 
matter  of  more  vital  interest  when  George 
was  fourteen  years  old. 

Laurence  Washington  had  served  as  cap 
tain  in  a  Virginia  regiment  under  General 
Wentworth  and  Admiral  Vernon,  in  the 
united  attack  of  naval  and  land  forces  upon 
Cartagena,  South  America,  in  1741.  Im- 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    7$ 

paired  health,  the  consequence  of  illness 
contracted  during  the  siege,  hindered  the 
fulfillment  of  his  intention  of  joining  the 
British  army,  and  making  the  profession  of 
arms  his  life-work.  The  Rappahannock 
plantations  and  Fredericksburg,  the  one 
town  of  consequence  upon  the  river,  have 
always  furnished  a  quota  of  men  and  offi 
cers  to  the  navy  far  in  excess  of  what 
might  be  considered  their  natural  propor 
tion  of  seafaring  people.  One  might  sup 
pose  that  the  conditions,  physical  or  men 
tal,  of  the  region  are  peculiarly  favorable 
to  the  development  of  a  longing  for  mari 
time  adventure.  With  his  mother's  sanc 
tion,  George  Washington  paid  many  and 
long  visits  to  Mount  Vernon,  she  judging 
sensibly  that  the  society  gathered  about 
her  favorite  step-son  and  his  charming  wife 
would  be  a  liberal  education  for  the  fast- 
growing  country-boy.  There,  and  at  Bel- 
voir,  he  met  English  and  colonial  military 
men,  officers  of  the  army  and  navy,  and 
the  martial  fire  that  had  glowed  in  his 
English  ancestor  John,  and  warmed  the 


76   THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

pulses  of  the  half-brother  he  loved  and  re 
vered,  was  kindled  in  the  listener's  heart, 
while  the  veterans  fought  their  battles  over 

o 

again,  and  predicted  other  struggles  before 
permanent  peace  could  be  assured. 

After  each  of  these  visits  he  went  back 
to  his  mother  with  the  eager  petition  that 
she  would  allow  him  to  enter  the  British 
navy,  a  request  seconded  by  Laurence's 
powerful  influence.  The  mother  hesitated 
and  argued,  —  an  unusual  course  of  action 
in  one  so  prompt  to  decide,  so  energetic  in 
deed.  But  she  must  have  seen  ere  this 
that  the  eldest  of  her  brood  was  an  eaglet 
who  could  not  long  be  detained  in  the  nest 
He  was  tall  for  his  fourteen  years,  remark 
ably  robust  and  fearless  of  hardships.  In 
the  steady  purpose  to  attain  a  thorough 
education,  after  learning  all  that  could  be 
taught  him  in  an  "  old  field  school,"  —  kept 
by  Hobby,  pedagogue  and  sexton,  and  the 
most  conceited  man  in  three  parishes, — 
the  lad  made  a  daily  journey  on  horseback 
in  winter  and  summer  to  what  was  con 
sidered  a  better  school  among  the  hills  ten 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  77 

miles  away,  and  the  next  year  rowed  morn 
ing  and  evening  in  the  roughest  weather 
across  the  river  to  the  Fredericksburg 
Academy,  the  same  in  which  two  other 
Presidents,  Madison  and  Monroe,  were 
afterward  prepared  for  college.  That  he 
would  have  a  career  in  a  day  when  history 
was  in  making  was  evident,  and  the  mother, 
if  not  ambitious  for  him,  was  so  far  in  sym 
pathy  with  his  restlessness  under  the  limi 
tations  of  his  present  life  that  she  heark 
ened  patiently  to  his  arguments,  reinforced 
by  those  of  Laurence  Washington,  Mr.  Fair 
fax,  and  the  family  physician,  who  repre 
sented  the  advantages  of  an  active  life  in  the 
open  air  for  her  boy.  She  had  written  to 
her  brother  shortly  after  the  subject  was 
broached,  but  his  answer  was  delayed  so 
long  that  before  receiving  it  she  yielded  to 
the  combined  pressure  brought  to  bear 
upon  her. 

The  lad's  midshipman's  warrant  in  the 
British  navy  was  procured  in  the  winter 
of  1746-47  by  the  influence  of  his  half- 
brother,  and  preparations  were  begun,  gayly 


78    THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

by   George,   sadly  enough   by  his  mother, 
for  his  outfit  and  departure. 

Still  another  side-light  falls  athwart  a  fea 
ture  of  Madam  Washington's  character  that 
proves  her  mortal,  and  for  once  neither  un 
like  nor  superior  to  the  majority  of  mothers. 
Mr.  Robert  Jackson,  of  Fredericksburg,  the 
friend  of  both  parties  to  the  controversy, 
writes  confidentially  to  Laurence  Washing 
ton  :  — 

"  I  am  afraid  Mrs.  Washington  will  not 
keep  up  to  her  first  resolution.  She  seems 
to  dislike  George's  going  to  sea,  and  says 
several  persons  have  told  her  it  was  a  bad 
scheme.  She  offers  several  trifling  objec 
tions,  such  as  a  fond,  unthinking  mother 
habitually  suggests,  and  I  find  that  one 
word  against  his  going  has  more  weight 
than  ten  for  it." 

Mr.  Robert  Jackson  was  very  man,  and 
an  audacious  one  at  that,  in  that  he  could 
couple  the  phrase  "  fond,  unthinking  mo 
ther  "  with  the  name  of  the  Spartan  parent 
who,  having  put  personal  preference  behind 
her,  honestly  believed  that  she  scanned  the 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON    79 

projected  "  scheme  "  critically  for  her  child's 
sake,  and  that  alone.  She  knew  the  perils 
to  morals  and  to  life  attendant  upon  the 
profession  selected  for  him,  and  had  before 
her  a  living  evidence  of  some  of  these  in 
the  condition  of  Laurence  dying  by  inches 
of  pestilence-poison  taken  into  his  system 
during  the  horrible  experiences  of  Carta 
gena,  when  thousands  of  his  comrades  died 
of  the  plague.  If  she  lent  ear  to  what 
*'  several  persons  "  said,  it  was  because  her 
heart  trembled,  and  her  judgment  had  been 
convinced  against  her  will  by  the  impas 
sioned  pleadings  of  her  boy,  and  the  calmer 
advocacy  of  his  cause  on  the  part  of  men  of 
the  world  who  held  Mr.  Jackson's  views  as 
to  women's  ability  to  see  both  sides  of  a 
question,  and  to  weigh  evidence. 

While  in  this  distressing  incertitude,  she 
received  the  long-expected  letter  from 
Brother  Joseph.  It  was  dated  May  19, 
1747,  and  couched  in  the  barrister's  most 
characteristic  style :  — 

"  I  understand  that  you  are  advised  and 
have  some  thoughts  of  putting  your  son 


80   THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

George  to  sea.     I  think  he  had   better  be 

o 

put  apprentice  to  a  tinker,  for  a  common 
sailor  before  the  mast  has  by  no  means  the 
common  liberty  of  the  subject ;  for  they 
will  press  him  from  ship  to  ship,  where  he 
has  fifty  shillings  a  month,  and  make  him 
take  twenty-three,  and  cut  and  slash  and 
use  him  like  a  negro,  or  rather  like  a  dog. 
And  as  to  any  considerable  preferment  in 
the  navy,  it  is  not  to  be  expected,  as  there 
are  so  many  gaping  for  it  here  who  have 
interest,  and  he  has  none.  And  if  he 
should  get  to  be  master  of  a  Virginia  ship 
(which  is  very  difficult  to  do),  a  planter  who 
has  three  or  four  hundred  acres  of  land, 
and  three  or  four  slaves,  if  he  be  industri 
ous,  may  live  more  comfortably,  and  have 
his  family  in  better  bread  than  such  a  mas 
ter  of  a  ship  can.  .  .  . 

"  He  must  not  be  too  hasty  to  be  rich, 
but  go  on  gently  and  with  patience  as 
things  will  naturally  go.  This  method, 
without  aiming  at  being  a  fine  gentleman 
before  his  time,  will  carry  a  man  more  com 
fortably  and  surely  through  the  world  than 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   8 1 

going  to  sea,  unless  it  be  a  great  chance  in 
deed.     I  pray  God  to  keep  you  and  yours. 
"  Your  loving  brother, 

"  JOSEPH  BALL." 

Either  the  lad's  mother,  who  never  put 
pen  to  paper  if  she  could  help  it,  had  failed 
to  make  clear  what  were  George's  prospects 
and  desires,  or  the  conservative  cockney 
had  read  the  letter  carelessly.  The  epistle 
bristles  with  British  prejudice,  and,  in  its 
almost  brutal  frankness,  is  a  painful  sug 
gestion  of  what  had  been  his  sister's  life 
while  a  member  of  his  household,  and  under 
his  command.  His  contempt  for  provincial 
opinions  and  ambitions  matches  his  igno 
rance  of  the  real  state  of  affairs  in  the  col 
ony  in  which  he  was  born.  Notwithstand 
ing  his  many  visits  to  Virginia,  and  his 
pecuniary  interest  in  her  improvement,  he 
had  no  appreciation  of  her  progress  during 
the  last  quarter-century.  Ah  !  if  that  finest 
of  old  Virginia  gentlemen  —  William  Byrd 
—  impregnable  in  the  conviction  that  his 
State  was  the  goodliest  land  the  sun  ever 


82     THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

shone  upon,  and  exultant  in  presages  of  her 
glorious  future,  could  have  sat  down  oppo 
site  the  dogmatic  lawyer  in  the  Westover 
drawing-room,  and,  transfixing  him  with  his 
shining  dark  eyes,  —  have  had  his  way  with 
him  for  an  hour  !     It  would  have  been   the 
encounter    of    stag-hound   and    bull-terrier. 
What  did  the    Londoner  reck  of  the  bril 
liant  gatherings  at  Belvoir  and  Mount  Ver- 
non,   when  men   before   whom   he  and  his 
fellow -citizens   would   have  stood   cap- in  - 
hand    encouraged    the    ardent    boy    in    his 
hopes  and  spurred  his  mettled  spirit ;  how 
guess  —  when    he    said    flatly    of   govern 
mental  influence,   "//<?has  none" — at  the 
midshipman's  commission  obtained  for  his 
provincial    nephew    by    the    fond    brother, 
whose    dear   friend    was    Admiral  Vernon, 
and  whose  companion-in-arms  was  General 
Wentworth  ?     How  was  he  to  divine  that 
the   raw   lad  who,    he    advised,   should    be 
bound   to  a   tinker  sooner  than    have    his 
way,  and  whom   he  cautioned  patronizingly 
against  being  a  fine  gentleman  before  his 
time,  was   already  the   favorite   companion 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   83 

of  Thomas  Lord  Fairfax,  a  peer  of  the 
realm,  an  Oxonian  by  education,  a  member 
of  the  Spectator  Club,  and  the  owner  of 
all  the  lands  in  the  Northern  Neck,  between 
the  Rappahannock  and  the  Potomac,  and 
the  Blue  Ridge  and  the  Chesapeake  ? 

It  is  a  woeful  pity  that  we  have  no  record 
or  tradition  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
nephews  and  their  allies  received  this  as 
tonishingly  bumptious  and  fatuous  commu 
nication.  It  must  have  read  to  them  like 
impertinent  fustian,  that  would  have  been 
beneath  contempt  but  for  the  effect  it  had 
upon  George's  mother.  Respect  for  and 
obedience  to  Brother  Joseph  had  grown 
into  her  character  during  the  formative 
time  passed  under  his  shadow  at  Epping 
Forest.  He  would  ever  be  to  her  loyal  soul 
the  chief  of  her  clan.  Her  clear  eyes  could 
not  but  see  that  he  was  fighting  as  wildly 
as  a  blindfolded  bruiser,  his  heaviest  blows 
beating  the  air;  but  the  remembered  crack 
of  the  whip  appealed  to  memory  and  con 
science,  and,  wise  head  though  hers  was, 
the  babble  of  press-gangs  and  floggings 


84     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

had  some  effect,  if  only  because  it  echoed 
her  own  boding  dreams.  She  made  up  her 
mind  upon  the  spot.  No  time  was  to  be 
lost.  George  had  his  uniform,  the  natty 
midshipman's  cap,  and  in  the  belt  the 
jaunty  little  dirk,  that  gave  it  the  true  mar 
tial  touch.  His  luggage  was  on  board  of  a 
British  man-of-war  moored  in  the  Potomac. 
To-morrow  her  eaglet  would  have  flown. 
Armed  with  Brother  Joseph's  letter,  she 
sought  his  presence  and  refused  positively 
to  let  him  go.  When  he  rebelled,  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life,  and  passed  from  argu 
ment  to  pleading,  her  rare  tears  burst  forth ; 
the  "  fond,  unthinking  mother"  eclipsed  the 
rigid  matron,  and  the  son,  terrified  by  her 
emotion,  bowed  to  her  will. 

Barrister  Joseph  builded  better  than  he 
knew,  but  while  America  owes  her  freedom 
to  his  besotted  pugnacity,  gratitude  is  due, 
not  to  him,  but  to  the  Divine  Wisdom  that 
makes  the  stupidity  as  well  as  the  wrath  of 
man  to  praise  Him  for  his  wonderful  works 
to  the  children  of  men. 

After  what  the  mother-heart  must  often 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON     85 

have  reckoned  a  Pyrrhian  victory  over  the 
dearest  wishes  of  the  gallant  boy  whose 
filial  obedience  under  the  crucial  test  en 
hanced  her  appreciation  of  his  noble  na 
ture,  Madam  Washington  suffered  him  to 
spend  most  of  his  time  with  the  half-brother 
who  shared  his  disappointment.  She  would 
not  thwart  him  again  when  opposition  could 
be  avoided,  and  a  common  chagrin  had 
knit  the  brothers'  hearts  yet  more  closely 
together.  In  the  effort  to  overcome  his  re 
grets  at  the  frustration  of  his  best  hopes, 
George  turned  with  redoubled  diligence  to 
the  study  he  liked  best,  that  of  mathe 
matics.  His  mother  gladly  engaged  a  pri 
vate  tutor  for  him  in  the  higher  branches  of 
the  science,  and  under  him  George  learned 
what  was  his  first  step  to  success,  —  land 
surveying.  At  sixteen,  through  the  Fair 
fax  influence,  he  received  the  extraordinary 
—  considering  his  years  —  appointment  of 
public  surveyor.  In  the  practice  of  his  pro 
fession  he  resided  at  Mount  Vernon,  visit 
ing  his  mother  often,  and  gradually  taking 
Laurence's  place  as  manager  and  adviser. 


86    THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

It  is  to  his  eternal  honor  that  not  an  inti 
mation  is  given  by  contemporary  or  sub 
sequent  historians  that  the  painful  epi 
sode,  to  him  approximating  a  tragedy, 
tinged  with  bitterness  his  feelings  toward 
her  who  had  given  him  birth.  He  was  her 
staunch  champion  then  and  ever.  She  was 
his  mother,  —  therefore  always  right. 

He  held  Governor  Dinwiddie's  commis 
sion  as  major,  and  was  drawing  $750  per 
annum  as  commandant  of  a  military  posi 
tion,  when  a  call  nearer  home  diverted 
thought  and  service.  The  gallant  fight 
made  by  his  best-beloved  brother  against 
the  insidious  malady  that  was  undermining 
his  system  was  near  its  end.  Accompanied 
by  George,  he  sailed  for  the  West  Indies  in 
the  autumn  of  1751,  and,  continuing  to  fail 
after  his  arrival,  sent  back  his  brother  to 
bring  his  wife  to  him.  He  returned  to 
Mount  Vernon  in  June,  1752,  and  lived  but 
a  few  weeks  longer.  He  was  buried  at 
Mount  Vernon. 

Three  out  of  the  four  children  born  of 
this  marriage  had  preceded  the  father  into 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    87 

the  other  world.  Evidently  comprehending 
that  the  survivor  must  share  the  fate  of 
the  rest  by  reason  of  inherent  delicacy  of 
constitution,  he  directed  in  his  will  that  in 
case  of  her  demise  without  issue,  Mount 
Vernon  should  become  the  property  of  his 
brother  George.  Within  the  year  the 
youthful  major  received  a  legacy  he  must 
have  accepted  with  an  aching  heart.  Short 
space  was  allowed  him  for  enjoyment  of  his 
new  possessions.  In  1753,  although  only 
one-and-twenty  years  of  age,  he  was  ap 
pointed  by  Robert  Dinwiddie,  then  gover 
nor  of  the  State  of  Virginia,  to  be  the 
bearer  of  dispatches  to  the  French  com 
mander  St.  Pierre.  The  route  designated 
for  the  envoy  and  his  small  party  was 
through  a  wild  and  savage  country;  the 
month,  November.  He  called  to  see  his 
mother  on  the  way  to  Williamsburg,  and 
explained  to  her  the  nature  of  his  mission. 
She  heard  and  questioned  him  calmly,  of 
fering  no  objections  to  the  enterprise  she 
saw  was  fraught  with  peril.  With  her  fare 
well  kiss  she  bade  him  "  remember  that 


88     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

God  only  is  our  sure  trust.  To  Him  I 
commend  you." 

In  the  strength  of  that  trust  she  awaited 
with  outward  tranquillity  the  passage  of  the 
forty-odd  days  that  elapsed  before  her  hero 
presented  himself  in  her  presence  with  the 
news  of  the  triumphs  of  the  little  expedi 
tion. 

In  1755  came  a  summons  from  the  newly- 
arrived  General  Braddock,  who  was  sent  to 
America  to  put  an  end  to  the  French  and 
Indian  warfare  that  threatened  the  exist 
ence  of  the  colonies.  The  fame  of  the 
Virginia  colonel  reached  him  as  soon  as  he 
landed  in  America,  and  he  offered  an  hon 
orable  and  flattering  command  to  the  am 
bitious  youth.  Before  accepting  it,  Wash 
ington  held  another  conference  with  his 
mother.  The  news  of  the  offer,  tempting 
to  him  and  terrifying  to  her,  drove  her  to 
pay  a  hasty  visit  to  Mount  Vernon. 

It  is  surprising  that  artist  and  poet  have 
passed  over  this  interview  in  the  quest 
for  the  picturesque  in  American  history. 
Mount  Vernon  was  one  of  the  notable  plan- 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    89 

tation  houses  of  the  riverside,  although  less 
spacious  than  now,  and  the  proprietor  was 
the  rising  man  of  the  colony.  A  portrait 
of  him  in  his  colonel's  uniform  is  that  of  a 
magnificently  built  man  with  a  kingly  port 
and  face.  The  birthright  of  leadership  was 
stamped  upon  him ;  his  manners  had  al 
ready  the  serious  dignity  that  distinguished 
him  as  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Conti 
nental  Army,  and  President  of  the  United 
States.  Upon  his  return  from  the  inter 
view  with  Braddock,  he  was  met  upon  the 
threshold  of  his  home  by  his  mother.  She 
was  now  in  her  fiftieth  year,  and  clad 
plainly,  in  widow's  weeds.  Without  pre 
amble,  she  opened  the  case  with  a  strenu 
ous  appeal  to  him  not  to  risk  a  life  so  dear 
to  her  and  so  valuable  to  his  country  in  an 
expedition  led  by  the  dashing  Irishman, 
whose  renown  for  reckless  bravery  had  pre 
ceded  him.  '  Important  interests  in  county 
and  colony  required  the  services  of  one 
of  the  largest  landholders  in  the  region. 
Surely  another  could  better  do  Braddock's 
bidding  than  fill  George  Washington's  place 


90     THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

should  his   life   be  sacrificed  to  a  mistaken 
sense  of  duty. 

Her  words  of  truth  and  soberness  had 
weight  with  the  listener.  Two  days  passed 
before  he  determined  to  adhere  to  his  origi 
nal  design.  He  began  the  final  discussion 
respectfully  and  affectionately,  but  the 
steadfast  soul  from  which  he  had  drawn  his 
own  must  have  perceived  from  the  outset 
the  futility  of  further  opposition.  He  took 
the  ground  on  which  he  could  meet  her  on 
most  nearly  equal  terms,  —  that  of  the 
choice  of  duties.  Granting  full  weight  to 
all  that  she  had  said,  he  represented  his 
country's  need  of  him,  and  why  he  had 
been  selected  for  this  especial  work.  The 
public  weal  should  overbalance,  in  the  pa 
triot's  mind,  the  demands  of  self-interest 
and  local  concerns.  The  safety,  and  per 
haps  the  very  existence  of  the  colonies,  de 
pended  in  his  judgment  upon*  immediate 
concert  of  action.  All  the  trained  forces 
at  the  command  of  the  government  should 
be  massed  at  a  given  point,  and  advance 
upon  the  enemy  under  officers  approved  for 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     91 

skill  and  valor.  He  believed  that  such  a 
policy  would  be  followed  by  speedy  defeat 
and  dispersion  of  the  forces  gathering  upon 
the  frontier. 

•  She  hearkened  attentively  and  mutely, 
doubtless  with  natural  pride  in  the  gallant 
speaker  that  upbore  the  sinking  heart,  and 
unable  to  repress  a  thrill  of  admiration  at 
the  address  with  which  he  finally  turned 
her  own  words  upon  her  :  — 

"  The  God  to  whom  you  commended  me, 
Madam,  when  I  set  out  upon  a  more  peril 
ous  errand,  defended  me  from  all  harm,  and 
I  trust  He  will  do  so  now.  Do  not  you  ?  " 

We  can  fancy  the  rare,  humorous  gleam 
that,  we  are  told,  gave  a  peculiarly  arch  ex 
pression  to  her  features,  stealing  over  them 
at  this  adroit  touch.  The  allusion  to  the 
Power  which,  she  had  taught  him  from 
babyhood,  guided  the  honest  soul  into  the 
path  of  right  and  safety,  could  not  be  gain 
said.  She  had  supplied  him  with  the  wea 
pons  with  which  he  overcame  her.  It  was 
the  last  severe  conflict  between  the  two 
master-wills.  With  candor  that  matched  his, 


Q2     THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

she  refrained  from  further  remonstrance, 
and  declared  herself  convinced  that  he  was 
in  the  right. 

We  are  irresistibly  reminded  in  reading 
of  the  momentous  debate,  and  the  result  of 
it,  of  that  conference  of  the  disciples  in  the 
house  of  Philip  of  Caesarea,  when  the  plead 
ings  of  those  who  loved  him  were  stayed 
by  the  chiefest  Apostle  with  an  impassioned 
outbreak  from  a  tried,  yet  resolute  soul :  — 

" '  What  do  ye,  weeping  and  breaking  my 
heart  ?  for  I  am  ready  not  to  be  bound  only, 
but  to  die  at  Jerusalem" 

"And  when  he  would  not  be  persuaded, 
we  ceased,  saying,  '  The  will  of  the  Lord  be 
done  ! ' " 

This  was  the  thought  uppermost  in  Mary 
Washington's  mind,  as  she  went  back  to 
the  Ferry  Farm  and  the  duties  that  awaited 
her  there. 

This  was  in  April,  1755  ;  the  monotonous 
round  of  plantation-life  was  soon  broken  by 
stirring  news  of  the  formation  of  the  fa 
mous  Braddock  expedition,  and  the  depar 
ture  for  the  seat  of  war.  On  July  9  occurred 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     93 

the  terrible  defeat  of  the  British  and  Co 
lonial  forces.  Of  sixty  odd  officers,  Wash 
ington  was  the  only  one  who  escaped  un 
harmed,  and  the  report  that  he  had  fallen 
on  the  field  of  battle  was  the  first  tidings  of 
the  eventful  day  that  reached  his  mother.  In 
what  agony  of  desolation  she  awaited  par 
ticulars  of  her  bereavement ;  what  struggles 
went  on  in  the  chastened  soul  between 
knowledge  of  the  blow  dealt  by  the  God 
whom  she  had  trusted  and  faith  not  to  be 
shaken  from  its  hold,  are  left  to  us  to  con 
jecture.  Almost  a  fortnight  elapsed  before 
mourning  was  turned  into  thanksgiving  by 
the  receipt  of  a  letter  written  by  the  be 
loved  hand,  dated  July  18,  and  sent  by 
special  messenger  from  Fort  Cumberland. 

It  began,  "  Honored  Madam." 

It  was  his  invariable  custom  thus  to  ad 
dress  his  mother  upon  paper.  It  was  one 
of  the  ways  of  that  day,  which  he  and  men 
like  him  helped  to  make.  Whatever  might 
be  the  clash  of  opinion  between  them ;  how 
ever  strongly  the  parent,  in  her  linsey  skirt, 
short  jacket,  and  mob-cap,  might  contrast 


94     THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

with  the  elegant  dames  who  strove  for  his 
favor,  she  was  ever  "  honored "  in  his 
thought  and  in  his  speech.  A  sovereign  in 
her  own  right,  she  commanded  his  per 
petual  allegiance. 

The  letter  gave  a  succinct  account  of  the 
disaster,  and  recounted  the  circumstances 
of  his  almost  miraculous  escape,  "  although 
I  had  four  bullets  through  my  coat  and  two 
horses  shot  under  me."  He  mentions,  too, 
an  illness  prior  to  the  fight,  of  which  she 
had  not  heard,  that  had  confined  him  to 
bed  and  wagon  for  above  ten  days,  and 
from  which  he  was  "  not  half-recovered " 
when  he  went  into  action.  He  fears  that 
in  the  necessity  of  halting  for  some  days 
to  recover  strength  to  proceed  homeward, 
and  the  probability  that  he  will  not  be  able 
to  stir  from  Mount  Vernon  until  towards 
September,  he  will  not  have  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  her  until  then,  and  subscribes  him 
self  thus:  — 

"  I  am,  honored  Madam,  your  most  duti 
ful  son." 

His  mother  had,  also,  the  solemn  joy  of 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    95 

reading  in  his  letter,  written  on  the  same 
day  to  her  step-son,  Augustine,  the  acknow 
ledgment  that  "  by  the  all-powerful  protec 
tion  of  Providence  I  have  been  protected 
beyond  all  human  probability  or  expecta 
tion." 

She  did  not  wait  for  him  to  come  to  her 
upon  his  return  to  Mount  Vernon,  late  in 
July,  but  hastened  to  see  and  nurse  him. 
His  robust  frame  was  in  a  state  of  pitiable 
exhaustion,  but  his  spirit  was  unbroken.  To 
her  tender  expostulations  against  the  sacri 
fice  of  health,  fortune,  and  perhaps  life,  he 
pleaded  the  patriot's  obligation  not  to  fail 
his  country  in  the  hour  of  extremity.  She 
was  back  in  her  home  when  he  wrote  to 
her,  under  the  date  of  August  14:  — 

"  HONORED  MADAM,  —  If  it  is  in  my  power 
to  avoid  going  to  Ohio  again,  I  shall,  but  if 
the  command  is  pressed  upon  me  by  the 
general  voice  of  the  country,  and  offered 
upon  such  terms  as  cannot  be  objected 
against,  it  would  reflect  dishonor  upon  me 
to  refuse  it,  and  that,  I  am  sure  must,  or 
ought  to  give  you  greater  uneasiness  than 


96      THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

my  going  in  an  honorable  command.    Upon 
no  other  terms  will  I  accept  it." 

They  understood  one  another  by  now. 
She  had  the  good  sense  to  accept  the  fact 
that  her  boy  was  a  man,  and  the  best  judge 
of  his  own  affairs.  Henceforward  she  gave 
him  fullest  sympathy,  how  intelligent  may 
be  gathered  from  such  letters  as  the  above. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

LATER  in  the  eventful  year,  1755,  the 
spirit  of  worldly  wisdom  moved  Brother 
Joseph  to  write  to  the  nephew  whom  he 
had  hectored  indirectly,  and  patronized  di 
rectly,  eight  years  before.  As  both  of  his 
letters  were  preserved  by  the  Washingtons, 
we  indulge  the  hope  that  George  and  the 
Fairfaxes  had  the  satisfaction  of  comparing 
them,  and  derived  as  much  wicked  enjoy 
ment  from  the  act  as  men  in  this  unsaintly 
century  would  feel  in  like  circumstances. 

"STRATFORD,  5th  of  September,  1755. 

"  GOOD  COUSIN,  —  It  is  a  sensible  pleasure 
to  me  to  hear  that  you  have  behaved  your 
self  with  such  a  martial  spirit  in  all  your 
engagements  with  the  French,  nigh  Ohio. 
Go  on  as  you  have  begun,  and  God  prosper 
you." 

We  are  credibly  informed  that  Washing 
ton  had  a  fine  sense  of  humor.  He  used  to 


98      THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

laugh  at  Nelly  Custis's  jokes,  and  smile  be- 
nignantly,  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  upon 
his  little  wife  when  she  brought  him  down 
from  the  heights  of  political  lucubrations  to 
the  levels  of  commonplace  matters  by  hook 
ing  her  finger  in  his  buttonhole ;  and  there 
are  many  playful,  some  sarcastic  touches  in 
his  correspondence.  A  grim  smile  must 
have  illumined  his  sedateness  when  he 
reached  this  benediction :  — 

"  We  have  heard  of  General  Braddock's 
defeat.  Everybody  blames  his  rash  con 
duct.  Everybody  commends  the  courage 
of  the  Virginia  and  Carolina  men,  which  is 
very  agreeable  to  me.  [!]  I  desire  you,  as 
you  may  have  opportunity,  to  give  me  a 
short  account  how  you  proceed.  I  am  your 
mother's  brother.  I  hope  you  will  not  deny 
my  request.  I  heartily  wish  you  good  suc 
cess,  and  am, 

"  Your  loving  uncle, 

"  JOSEPH  BALL. 

"To  MAJOR  GEORGE  WASHINGTON, 

"At  the  Falls  of  Rappahannock,  or  elsewhere  in 

Virginia. 

"  Please  direct  for  me  at  Stratford-by-Bow,  nigh 
London" 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  99 

No  talk  now  of  "going  on  gently  and 
with  patience,  as  things  would  naturally 
go,"  or  cautions  against  "  being  a  fine  gen 
tleman  before  his  time."  We  may  be  sure, 
from  the  urgent  plea  for  a  few  words  from 
his  "  good  cousin's  "  hand,  how  the  worthy 
cockney  would  strut  from  villa  to  villa  of 
the  suburban  neighborhood,  and  invade 
the  dingy  offices  of  the  Middle  Temple, 
and  buttonhole  acquaintances  at  the  street 
corners,  to  show  those  "  words,"  if  they  were 
ever  written  to  his  "  mother's  brother." 

The  leal  sister  shut  her  eyes  to  his  weak 
nesses,  perhaps  because  better  informed  as 
to  his  virtues  than  we.  In  1759  —  after 
her  son's  five  years'  service  in  the  army, 
his  election  to  the  House  of  Burgesses,  and 
resignation  of  his  position  of  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  Virginia  forces,  his  marriage 
to  Mrs.  Custis,  and  settlement  as  a  family- 
man  at  Mount  Vernon —  Madam  Washing 
ton  wrote  by  private  hand  to  her  now  vener 
able  mentor :  — 

"  I  inquire  by  all  opportunity  from  you, 
and  am  glad  to  hear  you  and  my  sister, 


100    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

and  Mr.  Downman  and  his  lady  [Brother 
Joseph's  daughter  and  her  husband]  keep 
your  health  so  well.  I  sometimes  hear  you 
intend  to  see  Virginia  once  more.  I  should 
be  proud  to  see  you.  I  have  known  a  great 
deal  of  trouble  since  I  saw  you :  there  was 
no  end  to  my  trouble  while  George  was  in 
the  army,  but  he  has  now  given  it  up." 

The  sigh  of  relief  in  the  last  sentence  was 
the  prelude  to  over  a  dozen  years  of  peace 
ful  enjoyment  of  domestic  life  in  the  homes 
upon  the  Rappahannock  and  the  Potomac. 
All  the  sons  were  married  ;  Samuel  had  set 
tled  in  Stafford  County ;  John  in  Westmore 
land;  Charles  in  Spottsylvania;  Augustine, 
the  surviving  step-son,  had  been  established 
for  several  years  upon  the  old  plantation  on 
Pope's  Creek.  Grandchildren  were  grow 
ing  up  about  Madam  Washington's  knees ; 
her  business-affairs  were  prosperous.  Los- 
sing  and  Mrs.  Ella  Bassett  Washington  af 
firm  that  George's  marriage  brought  delight 
to  his  mother;  the  former  authority  that 
"  the  social  position,  the  fortune,  and  the 
lively  character  of  the  bride  were  extremely 


THE  STORY  OP'  MARY  WASHINGTON    IOI 

satisfactory  to  Mary  Washington."  Betty 
Lewis's  great-granddaughter  says  more 
briefly  that  "  the  mother  rejoiced  in  the 
son's  happiness."  We  note  with  gratifica 
tion  this  coincidence  of  evidence,  because 
rumors  have  gained  credence  that  between 
the  Custises  and  the  plainer  matron  of  Pine 
Grove,  there  was  never  perfect  accord ;  that 
the  Dowager  Madam  Washington  had  little 
in  common  with  the  beautiful  heiress,  and 
that  their  intercourse  never  approximated 
intimacy.  I  shall  take  greater  pleasure  in 
inserting  in  due  order  of  the  narrative  an 
extract  from  the  pen  of  Martha  Washing 
ton's  grandson,  that  ought  to  kill  these  de 
tractions  beyond  the  fear  of  resuscitation. 

Mary  Washington's  tasks  were  essentially 
domestic,  and  as  child  after  child  left  her 
home  for  his  or  her  own,  she  became  an 
inveterate  "home-body."  The  plantation 
could  not  get  on  without  her,  and  the  chil 
dren  were  always  more  than  welcome  to 
come  to  her.  Her  doors  and  heart  were 
open  to  them  and  the  babies.  She  began 
to  call  herself  "  an  old  woman,"  although  she 


102     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

remitted  not  one  jot  of  the  work,  and  her  up 
right  figure,  brisk  step,  and  alert  eye  belied 
the  phrase.  To  this  season  of  outward  pros 
perity  and  inward  tranquillity  belongs  one  of 
the  few  letters  preserved  for  our  inspection. 
It  is,  for  a  wonder,  given  unedited  as  to  or 
thography,  and  is  the  more  welcome  on  that 
account.  Educators  maintain  that  spelling, 
like  the  use  of  the  fork,  must  be  learned 
before  the  age  of  fifteen,  or  not  at  all.  We 
bethink  ourselves  of  the  four  years'  dearth 
of  schoolmasters  in  Westmoreland,  during 
the  early  girlhood  of  the  Belle  of  the  North 
ern  Neck,  and  are  impressed  by  the  royal 
disregard  of  arbitrary  rules  manifest  in  the 
composition.  Writing  was  hard  work,  and 
she  wasted  not  a  word  or  stroke.  Since  it 
had  to  be  done,  she  did  it,  and  contrived  to 
leave  no  doubt  as  to  her  meaning.  The  ad 
dress  is  to  "Mr.  Joseph  Ball,  Esquire.  At 
Stratford-by-Bow,  nigh  London'" 

"July  2,  1760. 

"  DEAR  BROTHER,  —  This  comes  by  Cap 
tain  Nicholson.  You  seem  to  blame  me  for 
not  writeing  to  you,  butt  I  doe  ashure  you 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     103 

it  is  Note  for  the  want  of  a  very  great  regard 
for  you  and  the  family,  butt  as  I  dont  ship 
tobacco,  the  Captains  never  call  on  me,  soe 
that  I  never  know  when  tha  com  or  when 
tha  goe.  I  believe  that  you  have  got  a  very 
good  overseer  at  this  quarter  now.  Captain 
Newton  has  taken  a  large  lease  of  ground 
from  you  which  I  deare  say,  if  you  had  been 
hear  yourself,  it  had  not  been  don.  Mr.  Dan 
iel,  and  his  wife  and  family,  is  well ;  Cozin 
Hannah  has  been  married  and  lost  her  hus 
band.  She  has  one  child,  a  boy.  Pray  give 
my  love  to  Sister  Ball,  Mr.  Downman,  his 
son-in-law,  his  Lady.  I  am  Deare  Brother, 
"  Your  loving  sister, 

"  MARY  WASHINGTON." 

Several  interesting  and  characteristic  par 
ticulars  present  themselves  in  what  sounds 
like  a  trite  communication.  Brother  Joseph 
had  taken  her  to  task  for  remissness  in  cor 
respondence.  Simply,  and  with  no  haste  of 
self-vindication  or  show  of  wounded  feeling, 
she  assures  him  of  her  unabated  regard  for 
himself  and  family,  and  gives  the  all-suffi- 


104     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

cient  reason  for  her  apparent  negligence. 
The  shipment  of  Virginia's  great  staple  had 
made  some  of  her  neighbors  rich,  and  beg 
gared  others.  Without  having  so  much 
as  heard  of  the  Essay  on  Bulk  Tobacco 
presented  to  "  the  Honorable  Commission 
ers  of  their  Majesties  Customs,"  in  1692, 
by  the  "  Merchant  Masters  of  Ships  and 
Traders  to  Virginia  and  Maryland,"  our 
shrewd  woman  of  affairs  knew  it  to  be  an 
expensive  and  treacherous  crop,  subject  to 
perils  often  from  weather,  worms,  and  smug 
glers,  and  she  exported  none  in  bulk  or  par 
cel.  The  captains  of  outgoing  crafts  knew 
her  views  on  this  point,  and  gave  her  wharf 
a  wide  berth,  and  she  was  too  much  occu 
pied  in  minding  her  own  business  to  con 
cern  herself  with  their  coming  and  going. 
The  front  windows  of  the  Pine  Grove  house 
overlooked  the  river  and  Fredericksburg 
wharf  where  all  the  vessels  touched.  She 
must  have  been  singularly  void  of  idle  cu 
riosity  not  to  keep  some  watch  upon  the 
passing  sails. 

She  speaks  a  good  word  for  the  absen- 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     105 

tee's  overseer,  but  opines  dryly  that  Captain 
Newton  would  not  have  been  his  tenant 
had  he  been  on  the  spot  to  look  into  mat 
ters  for  himself.  Cozin  Hannah  is  probably 
the  daughter  of  William  Ball,  their  father's 
brother,  the  Hannah  who  married  Daniel 
Fox.  With  old-fashioned  courtesy,  she 
names  the  members  of  Brother  Joseph's 
family,  and  prays  that  her  love  may  go  to 
each.  The  signature  is  more  sloping  and 
in  bolder  sort  than  the  " Mary  Ball"  affixed 
to  the  seventeen -year -old  girl's  epistle. 
This  same  year,  Betty  Washington,  a  beauti 
ful  woman,  whose  portrait,  preserved  at  the 
ancestral  seat  of  the  Lewises  at  Marmion, 
Virginia,  bears  a  striking  resemblance  to 
her  distinguished  brother,  was  married  to  a 
wealthy  widower,  Colonel  Fielding  Lewis, 
of  Gloucester.  He  owned  much  real  estate 
in  and  around  Fredericksburg,  and  that  his 
wife  might  be  near  her  mother,  set  about 
building  Kenmore,  a  splendid  residence  for 
those  times.  It  was  then  in  the  suburbs  of 
the  busy  little  shipping-town  which  after 
wards  grew  out  to  and  beyond  it. 


106      THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

Kenmore  is  still  one  of  the  show-places  of 
Fredericksburg.  When  I  visited  it  in  May 
of  the  present  year  (1892),  it  was  in  excel 
lent  preservation,  having  been  purchased 
and  "  restored  "  by  people  appreciative  of 
the  associations  that  cluster  about  it.  The 
decorations  of  wainscot  and  ceilings  are 
elaborate  and  curious.  When  the  present 
occupants  took  possession,  the  dining-room 
walls  were  so  defaced  by  the  grime  that  had 
accumulated  during  the  years  in  which  it 
was  used  as  a  kitchen,  that  the  noble  wains 
cot  and  fretted  ceiling  were  a  surprise  to 
the  spectators  of  the  revelations  made  by  the 
cleaner's  brush.  Over  the  mantel  in  the 
drawing-room,  an  apartment  of  noble  dimen 
sions  and  ornamentation,  is  a  remarkable 
fresco,  said  to  have  been  designed  by  George 
Washington,  at  the  request  of  his  sister, 
the  invention  of  her  artists  having  "given 
out."  It  is  in  what  is  know  as  "  putty-work," 
or  plastic  stucco,  and  represents  in  low  re 
lief  several  scenes  from  ^Esop's  Fables,  — 
the  crow  with  the  lump  of  cheese  in  his 
mouth,  and  the  wheedling  fox  beneath  the 


BAS-RELIEF   OVER   DRAWING-ROOM    MANTEL   AT   KENMORE 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     107 

tree ;  the  wolf  accusing  the  lamb  of  fouling 
the  water;  and  other  less  conspicuous  tokens 
of  the  warrior's  familiarity  with  the  celebrated 
classic.  The  workmanship  of  the  whole  is 
decidedly  foreign.  The  story  runs  that  it 
was  executed  by  certain  Italians,  who,  having 
enlisted  in  the  French  army,  were  taken 
prisoners  in  America,  and  remained  there 
after  peace  was  declared. 

Betty  Lewis  has  hardly  had  the  attention 
from  her  mother's  and  brother's  biographers 
that  should  be  awarded  to  the  tender  devo 
tion  she  showed  to  her  surviving  parent,  and 
which  her  charms  of  person  and  character 
merited.  We  are  indebted  to  her  letters  for 
some  of  the  pleasantest  glimpses  of  Mary 
Washington's  home-life ;  and  the  reverent 
affection  of  her  children  proved  her  rare 
virtues  as  mother,  wife,  and  woman. 

This  tranquil  middle  period  of  our  hero 
ine's  existence  was  disturbed  by  the  muttering 
of  the  war-cloud  upon  the  Northern  horizon. 
WTith  sad,  and,  as  was  proved,  correct  fore 
bodings  that  it  would  be  long  before  peace 
was  restored,  Washington,  before  setting 


108      THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

out  to  take  charge  of  the  Colonial  troops 
after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  begged  his 
mother  to  leave  the  river-farm  and  take  a 
house  in  Fredericksburg.  Mrs.  Lewis  fol 
lowed  up  his  representations  of  the  danger 
of  her  present  residence  by  urgent  invitation 
to  their  parent  to  accept  a  home  at  Kenmore 
for  the  remainder  of  her  natural  life. 

Mary  Washington  never  showed  her  ster 
ling  sense  more  clearly  than  in  declining, 
gratefully,  gently,  and  firmly,  the  inconsider 
ately  generous  offer.  She  had  been  a  widow 
for  thirty-two  years,  accustomed  to  her  own 
home,  her  own  servants,  and  her  own  man 
ner  of  life.  The  spirit  and  habit  of  com 
mand  were  strong  within  her,  and  the  ways 
of  her  simple  establishment  had  unfitted  her 
to  occupy  a  visitor's  place  in  any  other,  es 
pecially  in  the  elegant  home  in  which  the 
wealthy  merchant  had  placed  her  daughter. 

"  My  wants  in  this  life  are  few,"  she  re 
plied  to  her  daughter's  fond  importunity, 
"  and  I  feel  perfectly  competent  to  take  care 
of  myself." 

To    Colonel    Fielding    Lewis's   proposal 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  IOQ 

that  he  should  relieve  her  of  the  labor  of 
going  back  and  forth  to  the  Ferry  Farm  and 
overseeing  the  plantation,  she  said :  - 

"  You  can  keep  my  books,  for  your  eye 
sight  is  better  than  mine  ;  but  leave  the  man 
agement  of  the  farm  to  me." 

It  was  not  then  so  well  understood  as 
now  that  inaction  and  rust  are  synonyms 
to  one  who  has  passed  his  fiftieth  birthday. 
Had  Madam  Washington  resigned  her  stir 
ring  life,  full,  for  every  waking  hour  of  the 
day,  with  specific  duties ;  had  exchanged 
the  daily  drive  over  the  plantation,  and  the 
countless  errands  into  the  outer  air,  insepa 
rable  from  the  business  of  managing  a  farm, 
for  the  luxurious  ease  of  Kenmore,  a  seat  in 
the  softest  chair  in  the  warmest  corner  of 
the  hearth,  and  no  livelier  interests  in  what 
went  on  about  her  than  such  as  a  well-to-do 
gentlewoman  far  on  in  the  sixties  might  feel 
in  pursuits  foreign  to  her  taste,  —  she  would 
have  collapsed  into  querulous  invalidism  or 
imbecility.  Conscious  of  the  splendid  re 
serves  of  vitality  within  her,  she  determined 
to  live  out  her  own  life  —  as  such  —  until 
disabled  by  old  age  or  fatal  disease. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  house  purchased  by  Mary  Washing 
ton  as  the  shelter  of  her  declining  years 
still  stands,  an  esteemed  relic,  in  the  heart 
of  the  town  of  Fredericksburg.  In  1890,  it 
became  the  property  of  the  Association  for 
the  Preservation  of  Virginia  Antiquities. 
It  was,  in  1775,  a  long,  low  cottage,  with 
four  windows  upon  Charles  Street,  and  the 
same  number,  of  unequal  sizes,  upon  the  side 
thoroughfare.  A  central  hall  ran  from  the 
front  to  the  back  doors.  Upon  the  right  of 
the  entrance  was  a  spacious  parlor,  and  op 
posite  this  a  still  larger  room,  which  was  se 
lected  as  the  chief  apartment  of  the  house, 
— "  the  chamber."  Back  of  this  was  the 
dining-room,  under  the  sloping  roof  that 
took  off  a  half-story  from  the  rear.  A  large 
pantry  where  stores  were  kept,  and  a  small 
bed-chamber  off  the  parlor,  completed  the 
number  of  rooms  upon  the  first  floor.  The 


mi        S 

II 


,  SJ    (<     ° 

" 


•^3^ 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   III 

half-story  above-stairs  was  lighted,  back  and 
front,  by  dormer-windows.  In  a  detached 
building,  behind  the  dwelling,  were  kitchen 
and  servants'  dormitories. 

The  stables  were  upon  the  corner  of  the 
block,  the  whole  of  which  was  occupied  by 
garden  and  orchard.  Madam  Washington 
was  always  fond  of  flowers  and  successful  in 
cultivating  them.  She  transplanted  into  the 
garden  of  her  new  abode  many  favorites 
from  across  the  river.  The  change  was 
great  to  one  who  loved  the  unrestrained 
liberty,  the  wide  spaces  and  free  air  of  plan 
tation  -  life,  yet  she  made  no  complaint. 
"  George  thought  it  best,"  was  the  reply  to 
query  and  marvel  at  the  radical  change  in 
her  surroundings  and  habits.  The  formula 
had  answered  her  mental  disinclination  to 
break  up  her  home  and  dwell  within  city- 
limits.  She  did  not  cnre  what  others 
thought  or  said.  Amid  the  various  burdens 
and  distractions  of  the  offices  pressed  upon 
him,  her  son  made  time  to  superintend  the 
business  of  removal,  and  saw  her  settled 
comfortably  in  the  unfamiliar  quarters  be 
fore  bidding  her  farewell. 


112    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

He  did  not  look  upon  her  face  again  in 
seven  years. 

Within  the  past  year,  since  the  effort  to 
erect  a  suitable  memorial  above  the  resting- 
place  of  MARY,  THE  MOTHER  OF  WASHING 
TON  has  assumed  form  and  proportions,  a 
rumor  has  been  set  afloat  that  she  repro 
bated  her  son's  action  in  identifying  himself 
with  the  rebellion  against  the  Parent  Coun 
try,  and  remained  an  obstinate,  some  say, 
a  malignant  Tory,  throughout  the  war. 
Hence  —  goes  on  the  calumny  —  he  never 
visited  her  during  the  struggle  for  Indepen 
dence,  and  with  difficulty  made  his  peace 
when  it  was  ended  by  the  victory  at  York- 
town. 

A  more  baseless  and  witless  slander  was 
never  concocted  by  the  latter-day  Athenian, 
whose  "new  thing"  must  be  "high"  in  fla 
vor,  or  fail  to  tempt  his  appetite. 

Lossing,  who  had  known  and  consulted 
the  venerable  grandson  of  Martha  Washing 
ton,  and  drew  his  information  from  others 
of  the  same  blood  ;  who  quotes  freely  from 
Sparks,  Irving,  Everett,  and  Paulding,  as 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  113 

well  as  from  contemporaneous  authorities, 
writes  in  serene  unconsciousness  that  such 
a  tale  ever  had  been  or  could  be :  — 

"  Madam  Washington  was  now  in  the 
direct  line  of  communication  between  the 
Eastern  and  Southern  colonies,  and  she 
was  in  the  constant  receipt  of  news  con 
cerning  the  progress  of  the  struggle  at  all 
points.  Washington  communicated  to  her, 
as  opportunities  offered,  tidings  of  the  most 
important  occurrences  in  the  strife.  Courier 
after  courier  would  appear  at  the  door  of 
her  dwelling  with  dispatches  which  told  her 
alternately  of  victory  and  of  defeat.  She 
received  all  messages  with  equanimity,  and 
never  betrayed  any  uncommon  emotion. 
When  the  cheering  news  of  the  victories 
at  Trenton  and  Princeton  reached  Freder- 
icksburg,  several  of  her  friends  congratu 
lated  her  upon  the  brilliant  achievements  of 
her  son,  when  she  simply  replied,  *  George 
seems  to  have  deserved  well  of  his  country ; ' 
and  when  some  of  them  read  paragraphs  of 
letters  they  had  received  in  which  the  skill 
and  bravery  of  Washington  were  applauded, 
she  said :  — 


114     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

"  *  Gentlemen,  here  is  too  much  flattery. 
Still,  George  will  not  forget  the  lessons  I 
have  taught  him ;  he  will  not  forget  him 
self,  though  he  is  an  object  of  so  much 
praise.'"  ' 

Had  he  been  at  that  moment,  to  her  ap 
prehension,  recreant  to  the  cause  of  right,  a 
traitor  to  his  king,  and  in  unlawful  rebellion 
against  the  government  to  which  she  felt 
she  owed  allegiance,  the  outspoken  matron, 
ever  fearless  in  defense  of  truth  and  justice, 
would  not  have  talked  of  his  being  true  to 
himself  and  to  the  lessons  she  had  taught 
him. 

Betty  Lewis's  descendant  is  as  explicit :  — 

"  During  the  trying  years  when  her  son 
was  leading  the  Continental  forces,  the  mo 
ther  was  watching  and  praying,  following 
him  with  anxious  eyes ;  but  to  the  messen 
gers  who  brought  tidings,  whether  of  vic 
tory  or  defeat,  she  turned  a  calm  face,  what 
ever  tremor  of  feeling  it  might  mask,  and 
to  her  daughter  she  said,  chiding  her  for 
undue  excitement,  *  The  sister  of  the  com 
manding  general  should  be  an  example  of 
fortitude  and  faith.' " 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    115 

Again,  from  the  same  trustworthy  source, 
we  learn  of  her  foremother's  demeanor  dur 
ing  the  "  troubled  and  anxious  "  eight  years 
"  with  few  lights  amid  their  shadows  :  "  — 

o 

"  The  experience  of  these  years  must  have 
been  most  deeply  felt  by  Washington's  mo 
ther,  but  whatever  the  tension  of  thought, 
there  was  no  change  of  demeanor  while  she 
dispersed  a  large  though  simple  hospitality 
to  the  friends  who  gathered  around  her  far 
and  near ;  and  though  her  means  were  lim 
ited,  her  charities  were  wide  and  generous. 
There  was  something  of  nervous  energy  in 
her  constant  occupation,  knitting-needles 
ever  flying  in  the  nimble  fingers ;  for  with 
her  daughter  and  their  domestics  to  aid, 
dozens  of  socks  were  knitted  and  sent  to  the 
General  at  camp  for  distribution,  together 
with  garments  and  provisions,  the  fruit  of 
her  thrift  and  economy." 

Rev.  Robert  Reid  Howison,  the  author 
of  The  History  of  Virginia,  and  The  Stu 
dent's  History  of  the  United  States,  —  a  man 
who  has  given  years  of  toilful  study  to  the 
collection  of  materials  for  the  admirable 


Il6    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

and  useful  volumes  I  have  named,  —  thus 
responds  to  a  query  as  to  what  foundation 
exists  for  the  story  that,  if  true,  stamps  an 
indelible  stigma  upon  the  character  of  the 
mother  of  Washington  :  — 

"  I  am  a  native  of  Fredericksburg,  and 
have  passed  the  greater  part  of  my  life  here 
and  in  the  immediate  vicinity.  I  have 
talked,  times  without  number,  with  people 
who  had  known  Mrs.  Washington.  Tales 
of  her  personal  characteristics,  her  doings, 
and  her  sayings  were  familiar  to  me  in  my 
boyhood,  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that 
I  hear  now  for  the  first  time  that  her  patri 
otism  was  ever  called  in  question.  Like 
Washington,  she  felt  at  the  beginning  of  the 
troubles  between  King  and  Colonies,  that 
overt  rebellion  should,  if  practicable,  be 
avoided,  and  with  him,  she  deprecated  the 
suggestion  of  war  with  the  Mother  Country. 
But,  once  convinced  that  the  conflict  was 
inevitable,  her  loyalty  never  swerved.  The 
cause  of  American  Independence  had  no 
more  steadfast  adherent.  I  confess  myself 
at  a  loss  to  conceive  how  a  slander  so  ground- 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    1 1/ 

less  could  have  originated,  at  a  period  so 
remote  from  the  event  it  involves." 

In  view  of  the  emptiness  of  the  charge, 
I  should  not  have  considered  it  worth  the 
ink  and  time  I  have  bestowed  upon  it,  had 
it  been  less  offensively  put  forth.  When  it 
passes  unchallenged  in  a  prominent  chapter 
of  the  Daughters  of  the  American  Revolu 
tion,  and  becomes  the  subject  of  debate  in 
a  prominent  Woman's  Club,  it  is  well  to 
seize  and  shake  it  to  pieces.  Alongside  of 
the  scrap  of  proof  in  support  of  the  false 
hood,  offered  by  the  son's  prolonged  absence 
from  Fredericksburg,  I  beg  leave,  in  quit 
ting  the  unsavory  subject,  to  lay  the  follow 
ing  sentence  from  George  Washington's 
letter  to  Lafayette,  dated  "  Mount  Vernon, 
February  i,  1784:" 

"  On  the  eve  of  Christmas  I  entered  these 
doors,  an  older  man  by  nine  years  than  when 
I  left  them." 

The  same  causes  had  exiled  him  from  his 
own  and  from  his  mother's  home. 

Once  more,  consulting  Madam  Washing 
ton's  lineal  descendant,  we  read:  — 


Il8     THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

"  When  the  tidings  of  the  splendid  suc 
cess  at  Yorktown  were  brought  direct  from 
the  General  to  his  mother,  she  was  moved 
to  an  exclamation  of  fervent  thanksgiving: 

" '  Thank  God  the  war  is  ended,  and  we 
shall  be  blessed  with  peace,  happiness,  and 
independence,  for  our  country  is  free  ! ' ' 

A  "  malignant  Tory"  would  have  sat  down 
in  sackcloth  and  ashes  to  bemoan  the  day 
in  which  the  man-child  was  born  who  had 
brought  this  calamity  to  pass. 

Returning  gladly  to  the  even  course  of 
our  narrative,  we  find  ourselves  at  the  last 
chapter  of  the  storm-and-stress  period,  the 
mighty  travail  out  of  which  was  born  our 
nationality. 

On  the  afternoon  of  November  n,  1781, 
Washington  arrived  in  Fredericksburg  with 
his  staff  of  French  and  American  officers,  en 
route  from  Yorktown  to  Philadelphia.  He 
left  his  retinue  at  the  place  appointed  as 
his  headquarters,  and  walked  unattended 
through  streets  vocal  with  his  name,  to  the 
corner-cottage  where  his  mother,  previously 
apprised  of  his  coming,  awaited  him.  Mr. 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  119 

Custis  tells  the  story  in  language  that  his 
habitual  ornateness  cannot  rob  of  tender 
interest: — 

"  She  was  alone,  her  aged  hands  employed 
in  the  works  of  domestic  industry,  when  the 
good  news  was  announced,  and  it  was  told 
that  the  victor  was  awaiting  at  the  thresh 
old.  She  bade  him  welcome  by  a  warm 
embrace,  and  by  the  well-remembered  and 
endearing  name  of  *  George,' --the  familiar 
name  of  his  childhood.  She  inquired  as  to 
his  health,  for  she  marked  the  lines  which 
mighty  cares  and  toils  had  made  in  his 
manly  countenance,  and  she  spoke  much  of 
old  times  and  old  friends,  but  of  his  glory 
not  one  word." 

One,  or  both,  of  two  reasons  may  have 
caused  what  strikes  the  modern  reader  as 
strange  reticence.  Washington's  dislike  of 
spoken  praise  was  proverbial.  Notable  in 
stances  of  this  were  his  extreme  confusion 
when  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  the  Bur 
gesses  announced  in  eulogistic  terms  the 
appointment  of  Major  Washington  to  the 
supreme  command  of  the  Colonial  forces,  and 


120     THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

in  1 789,  when,  at  a  New  York  theatre,  the 
interlude  of  the  play  promised  a  complimen 
tary  reference  to  himself.  "  He  smiled," 
says  a  chronicler,  "  but  looked  grave  and 
uneasy,  expecting  some  personal  adulation, 
which  always  annoyed  him."  To  no  one 
was  this  idiosyncrasy  better  known  than 
to  her  who  for  her  part  held  flattery  so 
cheap  that  nobody  dared  offer  it  to  her. 
She  would  comprehend,  moreover,  with  the 
quick  intuition  which  stood  her  in  stead  of 
worldly  address,  that  he  was  satiated  with 
"  war-talk,"  and  hungered  like  a  weary  child 
for  the  homely  converse  of  olden  times.  He 
longed  to  know  himself  again  as  her  son  and 
intimate.  Unheralded  and  unaccompanied, 
he  had  come  back  to  bow  himself  at  her 
knee,  and  she  met  him  in  kind.  The  grand 
simplicity  of  one  found  a  clear,  full  echo  in 
the  other. 

Again,  Mary  Washington  belonged  to  the 
school,  now  no  more,  of  parents  who  held 
as  an  invariable  rule  that  praise  of  one's 
offspring  was  in  bad  taste,  -and  a  positive 
injury  to  the  subject  of  laudation  if  heard 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   121 

by  him.  When  she  had  said,  "  George  will 
be  true  to  himself,"  she  covered  the  whole 
ground  in  her  own  mind.  She  had  the 
English  horror  of  wordy  scenes  and  melo 
dramatic  situations,  and  had  guarded  the 
door  of  her  lips  so  long  that  they  would  not 
have  opened  readily  to  sentimental  ejacula 
tions. 

Her  only  public  appearance  as  the  hero's 
mother  was  at  the  Peace  Ball  given  in  Fred- 
ericksburg  during  the  visit  of  Washington 
to  that  town.  With  all  her  majestic  self- 
command,  she  did  not  disguise  the  plea 
sure  with  which  she  received  the  special 
request  of  the  managers  that  she  would 
honor  the  occasion  with  her  presence. 
There  was  even  a  happy  flutter  in  the  play 
ful  rejoinder  that  "  her  dancing  days  were 
pretty  well  over,  but  that  if  her  coming 
would  contribute  to  the  general  pleasure  she 
would  attend." 

The  town-hall  was  hung  with  flags  and 
festooned  with  evergreens,  and  blazed  with 
light  on  the  November  night  of  the  festival. 
The  glitter  of  French  uniforms  and  the  gala- 


122     THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

attire  of  the  women  present,  who  had  drawn 
forth  from  chest  and  wardrobe  all  the  finery 
the  war  had  left  them,  made  the  scene  the 
gayest  the  "home-body"  had  ever  beheld. 
We  please  ourselves  by  speculating  whether 
or  not  Betty  Lewis  was  allowed  to  lace  up 
the  black  silk  gown  and  adjust  the  snowy 
kerchief  and  cap  the  wearer  adjudged  to  be 
the  only  correct  costume  for  a  plain  country 
woman  who  had  been  a  widow  for  almost  half 
her  life.  We  are  secure  in  the  belief  that 
her  garb  pleased  the  superb  son  who  led  her 
into  the  room  with  the  respectful  courtesy 
due  a  queen.  A  path  was  opened  from  the 
foot  to  the  top  of  the  hall  as  they  appeared 
in  the  doorway,  and  "  every  head  was  bowed 
in  reverence."  It  must  have  been  the  proud 
est  moment  of  her  life,  but  she  bore  herself 
with  perfect  composure  then,  and  after  her 
son,  seating  her  in  an  armchair  upon  the 
dais  reserved  for  distinguished  guests,  faced 
the  crowd  in  prideful  expectancy  that  all  his 
friends  would  seek  to  know  his  mother.  She 
had  entered  the  hall  at  eight  o'clock,  and  for 
two  hours  held  court,  the  most  distinguished 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY    WASHINGTON  123 

people  there  pressing  eagerly  forward  to  be 
presented  to  her.  She  received  them  with 
placid  dignity,  as  little  excited,  to  all  appear 
ance,  as  when  entertaining  her  Fredericks- 
burg  neighbors  in  the  roomy  "chamber,"  in 
one  corner  of  which  stood  the  "  best  bed 
and  tester,"  hung  with  the  "  Virginia  cloth 
curtains,"  bequeathed  in  her  will  to  her  son 
George.  From  her  slightly  elevated  posi 
tion  she  could,  without  rising,  overlook  the 
floor,  and  watched  with  quiet  pleasure  the 
dancers,  among  them  the  kingly  figure  of 
the  Commander-in-Chief,  who  led  a  Freder- 
icksburg  matron  through  a  minuet. 

At  ten  o'clock,  she  signed  to  him  to  ap 
proach,  and  rose  to  take  his  arm,  saying  in 
her  clear,  soft  voice  :  — 

"  Come,  George,  it  is  time  for  old  folks  to 
be  at  home  !  " 

Smiling  a  good-night  to  all,  she  walked 
down  the  room,  as  erect  in  form,  and  as 
steady  in  gait,  as  any  dancer  there. 

One  of  the  French  officers  (it  may  have 
been  Rochambeau  or  De  Grasse)  exclaimed 
aloud,  as  she  disappeared  :  — 


124    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

"  If  such  are  the  matrons  of  America,  she 
may  well  boast  of  illustrious  sons ! " 

In  the  autumn  of  1784,  Lafayette  paid 
his  respects  to  the  widowed  mother  of  his 
brother-in-arms,  visiting  Fredericksburg  for 
that  purpose  alone.  Mrs.  Fielding  Lewis 
—  by  this  time  a  widow  like  her  mother, 
and  with  a  family  of  young  children,  as 
that  mother  had  been  forty  years  ago  — 
was  visiting  her  brother  at  Mount  Vernon, 
and  sent  her  son  Fielding  (as  Mr.  Lossing 
has  it ;  Mrs.  Ella  Bassett  Washington  calls 
him  "  Robert ")  to  act  as  the  cicerone  of  the 
titled  foreigner.  Madam  Washington's  one 
recreation  was  walking  and  working  among 
her  flowers,  and  in  her  garden-garb  of  linsey 
skirt,  the  short  gown  we  would  style  "  a 
sacque,"  and  broad-brimmed,  hat  tied  over 
the  plaited  border  of  her  cap,  was  raking 
together  dry  weeds  and  sticks  into  a  heap, 
to  which  she  would  presently  apply  a  coal 
fetched  from  the  kitchen  fire,  and  burn  out 
of  sight.  The  visitors  approached  the  house 
from  Kenmore,  by  way  of  the  side-street 
The  boy,  proud  of  his  mission,  and  knowing 


LAFAYETTE   WALK 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   125 

his  grandmother  too  well  to  fear  disconcert 
ing  her,  pointed  her  out  over  the  palings  to 
his  companion. 

"  There  is  my  grandmother,  sir!"  he  said 
complacently,  and  unlatching  the  side-gate, 
led  the  Marquis  into  the  inclosure,  naming 
him  as  they  neared  the  venerable  mistress 
of  the  domain. 

The  situation  would  have  been  intolerable 
to  a  woman  who  had  one  atom  of  personal 
vanity.  The  startled  hostess  met  it  with 
the  aplomb  of  a  duchess.  She  dropped  her 
rake,  took  between  her  bare  palms  the  hand 
the  nobleman  extended,  while  he  bared  his 
lofty  head  and  bowed  before  her  in  deepest 
reverence.  Her  voice,  at  seventy-eight,  had 
no  longer  the  timbre  of  youth,  but  the  mod 
ulations  were  refined :  — 

"  Ah,  Marquis !  you  have  come  to  see  an 
old  woman  !  But  come  in  ;  I  can  make  you 
welcome  without  changing  my  dress.  I  am 
glad  to  see  you.  I  have  often  heard  my  son 
George  speak  of  you." 

She  preceded  him  into  the  narrow  hall, 
and,  near  the  front  entrance,  turned,  not 


126  THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

into  the  state  parlor,  set  out  stiffly  with  the 
"six  red  leather  chairs,  the  oval  table,  look 
ing-glasses,  and  walnut  writing-desk  with 
drawers,"  named  in  her  last  will  and  testa 
ment,  but  into  the  chamber,  her  "  living- 
room,"  where  she  was  used  to  sit  and  be  "  at 
home."  Those  acquainted  with  the  ways 
of  "Old  Virginia"  at  that  time  (and  fora 
century  afterward)  are  sure  that  a  brisk  lit 
tle  fire  burned  in  the  chimney,  the  season 
being  autumn,  and  Madam  "  an  old  woman." 
She  seated  Lafayette,  laid  aside  her  straw 
hat,  and  placed  herself  opposite  to  him.  In 
her  quaint  attire,  "  neat  as  a  nun's,"  erect  as 
at  eighteen,  never  touching  the  tall,  straight 
back  of  her  chair,  her  unfaded  eyes  full  of 
kindly  light,  she  listened  calmly  to  the  pan 
egyric  upon  her  son  poured  forth  by  the 
eloquent  Frenchman,  whose  strong  accent 
must  have  made  his  discourse  at  first  hardly 
intelligible  to  her  unaccustomed  ears. 

She  heard  her  George  lauded  as  the  mira 
cle  of  his  age ;  as  greater  than  Caesar,  and 
more  modest  than  Cincinnatus,  —  the  hero 
whose  fame  would  outlast  time. 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON  I2/ 

Her  well-known  reply  is  a  multum  in 
parvo. 

"  I  am  not  surprised  at  what  George  has 
done.  He  was  always  a  good  boy." 

That  "good"  comprised  all  public  and 
private  virtues  to  a  soul  laid  out  in  large, 
simple  lines.  What  had  set  a  world  to  won 
dering  had  not  "  surprised  "  her.  The  child 
of  prayers  and  cares  —  whose  greedy  ears  had 
from  his  youth  up  drunk  in  tales  of  worthy 
deeds  done  by  his  ancestors  of  six  hundred 
years ;  whose  own  father  had  been  without 
fear  and  without  reproach;  his  mother's 
pupil  as  she  reasoned  of  righteousness, 
temperance,  and  the  judgment  to  be  pro 
claimed  when  "  The  Great  Audit  "  should 
be  made  —  could  be  no  less  than  "  good." 
The  hero  described  by  the  fluent  tongue 
could  be  no  more. 

Fredericksburg  annalists  tell  us  laugh 
ingly,  and  with  sly  humor  at  thought  of 
modern  reforms,  that  Madam  Washington 
mixed  with  her  own  hands  a  mint-julep,  and 
offered  it  to  General  Lafayette  with  a  plate 
of  home-made  "ginger-cakes."  According 


128    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

to  the  social  customs  of  the  day,  she  would 
have  been  inhospitable  had  she  suffered  a 
guest  to  depart  without  some  refreshment  of 
which  wine  or  spirits  formed  a  part,  and  in 
that  region  the  mint-julep  was  the  prescribed 
u  article."  The  man  of  the  world  accepted 
the  beverage  as  simply  and  gracefully  as  it 
was  tendered,  pronounced  it  delicious,  and 
arose  to  go.  He  was  on  the  point  of  em 
barking  for  his  native  land,  he  said,  and  they 
would  probably  never  meet  again.  Would 
she  give  him  her  blessing? 

She  looked  up  to  heaven,  folded  her 
hands,  and,  in  sweet,  thrilling  tones,  prayed 
that  God  would  grant  him  "  safety,  happi 
ness,  prosperity,  and  peace."  Tears  were  in 
the  listener's  eyes ;  he  bent  to  kiss  the  with 
ered  hand,  thanked  her  fervently,  and  took 
his  leave.  The  grandson,  who  was  the  sole 
witness  of  the  touching  scene,  could  never 
speak  of  it  without  emotion. 

Lafayette's  report  of  the  interview  to  his 
friends  at  Mount  Vernon  was :  "  I  have 
seen  the  only  Roman  matron  living  at  this 
day ! " 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    129 

The  stirring  events  attendant  upon  the 
return  of  peace  and  the  assured  indepen 
dence  of  the  new  country  over,  Madam 
Washington's  life  resumed  its  even  tenor. 
It  had  been  her  wont  in  earlier  days  to  drive 
herself  daily,  in  fine  weather,  down  to  the 
ferry  in  her  gig,  and  on  board  of  the  flat- 
bottomed  scow  that  carried  passengers  over 
the  river.  Arrived  upon  the  other  side,  she 
made  the  round  of  the  farm,  inspecting 
fields,  gardens,  the  servants'  quarters,  and 
the  barns,  with  the  keen  eye  for  neglect  and 
disorder  cultivated  through  the  many  years 
of  stewardship  for  her  children.  If  rebuke 
were  needed,  she  administered  it  in  short, 
sharp  fashion,  as  in  the  case  of  an  overseer 
who  had  departed  from  her  instruction  in 
an  important  transaction,  excusing  himself 
by  saying  that  "  in  his  judgment  "  — 

"  And  who  gave  you  the  right  to  use  your 
judgment  in  the  matter?"  interrupted  the 
dictator,  "/command!  There  is  nothing 
left  im  you  but  to  obey." 

The  discharged  subordinate  declared  af- 

o 

terward  that  "her  eyes  flashed  blue  light- 


130   THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

ning,  and  he  felt  exactly  like  he  had  been 
knocked  down." 

There  is  pathos  in  the  anecdote  that  it 
was  her  practice  to  bring  'home  every  day 
a  jug,  or  demijohn,  of  water  for  her  own 
drinking,  from  a  spring  of  the  Stafford  plan 
tation,  declaring  that  no  other  water  tasted 
so  good.  The  rustic  fount  that  was  to  her 
as  the  Well  of  Bethlehem  bears  still  the 
name  of  "  Lady  Washington's  spring." 

As  years  and  weakness  increased,  she  was 
driven  about  town  and  across  the  ferry  in 
a  low-hung  vehicle,  like  a  topless  phaeton. 
Stephen,  the  only  man-servant  in  the  cot 
tage-establishment,  acted  as  coachman,  sit 
ting  stiffly  upon  the  box,  and  thoroughly 
imbued  with  a  consciousness  of  his  impor 
tance  as  part  of  the  equipage  which  every 
body,  young  and  old,  saluted  as  it  passed 
along  the  rambling,  unpaved  streets. 

The  phaeton  was  a  gift  from  her  son,  and 
she  preferred  it  to  any  other  carriage.  Be 
sides  it  and  the  bay  horse  that  drew  it,  her 
stables  held  a  pair  of  blacks  and  a  riding- 
chair  or  gig,  minutiae  worth  jotting  down 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  131 

as  controverting  the  false  impression  that 
Washington,  enjoying  his  own  and  his  wife's 
fortunes,  allowed  his  mother  to  live  in  pov 
erty. 

We  are  indebted  to  her  great-grand 
daughter  for  a  graphic  portraiture  of  Madam 
Washington  during  her  daily  drives,  which 
the  writer  had  heard  times  without  number 
from  her  father,  "  Betty  "  Lewis's  son  :  — 

"  In  summer  she  wore  a  dark  straw  hat 
with  broad  brim  and  low  crown,  tied  under 
her  chin  with  black  ribbon  strings;  but  in 
winter  a  warm  hood  was  substituted,  and 
she  was  wrapped  in  the  purple  cloth  cloak 
lined  with  silk  shag  (a  present  from  her  son 
George)  that  is  described  in  the  bequests  of 
her  will.  In  her  hand  she  carried  her  gold- 
headed  cane,  which  feeble  health  now  ren 
dered  necessary  as  a  support." 

Slow  decay  was  sapping  her  natural  pow 
ers.  An  accidental  blow  upon  the  breast, 
little  regarded  at  the  time,  quickened  the 
seeds  of  a  cancerous  tumor,  decided,  at  a 
date  when  surgical  science  was  compara 
tively  rude,  to  be  incurable.  Upon  July  24, 
1789,  Mrs.  Lewis's  bulletin  ran  thus:- 


132    THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

"  I  am  sorry  to  inform  you  that  mother 
still  suffers  from  her  breast.  She  is  sen 
sible  of  it  [that  is,  of  the  danger],  and  is 
perfectly  resigned,  —  wishes  for  nothing 
more  than  to  keep  it  easy.  She  wishes  to 
hear  from  you,  and  will  not  believe  you  are 
well  until  she  receives  it  from  your  hand." 

In  her  hour  of  mortal  extremity,  when  all 
she  could  hope  for  in  life  for  herself  was 
comparative  ease,  her  heart  trembled  for  the 
safety  of  the  Nation's  Hope.  She  would 
trust  no  tale  of  his  welfare  that  did  not  come 
from  him  who  had  never  deceived  her. 

The  end  was  approached  by  mercifully 
gradual  degrees.  She  made  herself  strong 
enough  in  the  early  summer  to  visit  her  sons, 
Samuel  and  Charles,  and  assure  herself  that 
all  was  well  with  them,  and  her  daughter 
was  in  daily  attendance  upon  her.  On 
April  14,  1789,  she  had  had  a  visit  from 
her  eldest-born  and  always  her  best-beloved 
child. 

The  interview  was  unexpected,  and  of  ne 
cessity  a  hurried  one.  That  very  morning 
Washington  had  received  official  notice  of 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   133 

his  election  to  the  Presidency  of  the  United 
States,  and  he  must  leave  for  New  York 
on  the  morrow.  He  had  galloped  up  from 
Mount  Vernon  to  snatch  an  hour  with  the 
woman  he  revered  in  weakness  and  old  age 
as  when  her  will  had  overruled  the  boy's 
plans  of  a  career.  He  found  her  in  u  the 
chamber,"  alert  in  mind  and  serene  of  spirit, 
but  so  altered  in  appearance  that  his  heart 
misgave  him.  Concealing  his  dreads,  he 
began  to  speak  cheerfully  of  his  intention, 
so  soon  as  public  business  could  be  disposed 
of,  to  return  to  Virginia  and  see  her  again. 

She  stayed  him  there  with  steady  voice 
and  feeble  hand.  This  would  be  their  last 
meeting  in  this  life,  she  said.  She  was  old, 
.and  a  fatal  disease  was  upon  her.  She 
would  not  be  long  in  this  world.  She 
trusted  in  God  that  she  was  somewhat  pre 
pared  for  a  better.  Then,  laying  the  wasted 
hand  upon  the  head  bowed  to  her  shoulder, 
she  told  him  that  Heaven's  and  his  mother's 
blessing  would  always  be  with  him. 

When  he  said  reluctantly  that  he  must  be 
gone,  she  arose  also,  as  loath  to  lose  sight 


134    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

of  him,  and  walked  with  him  to  the  cham 
ber-door,  leaning  for  the  last  time  upon  his 
arm,  and  he  felt  how  light  was  the  wasted 
form,  how  uneven  the  once  firm  tread.  As 
he  stooped  for  a  parting  embrace,  she  felt 
him  slip  a  purse  into  her  hand. 

She  put  it  back,  raising  her  head  with  the 
old-time  pride. 

"  I  don't  need  it ! "  she  said,  and  repeated 
the  formula  often  upon  the  lips  of  the  aged : 
"  My  wants  are  few." 

It  should  be  a  keepsake  from  him,  he  an 
swered,  and  would  not  take  it  back  again. 
It  was  full  of  gold,  as  she  saw.  They  were 
at  the  door,  through  which  the  faithful  body- 
servant,  "  Billy  Lee,"  was  visible,  holding  his 
master's  horse.  Time  pressed,  but  he  lin 
gered  to  plead  tenderly,  "  Whether  you 
think  you  need  it  or  not,  —  for  my  sake, 
mother!" 

We  consult  once  more  Mrs.  Ella  Bassett 
Washington's  narrative:  "The  appeal  was 
irresistible,  and  the  purse  was  retained ;  but 
after  he  had  gone  she  dropped  it  indiffer 
ently  upon  the  table,  and  sank  into  a  chair, 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON  135 

lost  in  sad  reverie.  Her  grandson,  coming 
in  with  a  message,  witnessed  the  parting 
scene,  and,  too  respectful  to  disturb  her  sor 
row,  hastened  home  to  tell  his  mother  all 
that  had  passed.  Feeling  anxious  touching 
her  mother's  state,  and  fearing  that  this  pain 
ful  excitement  might  cause  serious  illness, 
she  hastened  at  once  to  her  side.  Very  calm 
and  still  they  found  her,  seated  with  droop 
ing  head  and  calm,  unseeing  eyes." 

"  Unseeing  "  in  semblance,  yet  they  saw 
very  far  into  the  checkered  past  and  pierced 
the  shadowy  future.  To  very  few  is  it  per 
mitted  to  know,  beyond  peradventure,  that 
their  work  upon  this  earth  is  fully  done,  and 
well  done.  This  woman  had  this  assurance, 
and  henceforward  was  "  perfectly  resigned 
and  wished  for  nothing."  She  had  borne 
the  burden  of  five  young  lives  upon  unbend 
ing  shoulders  ;  had  brought  up  her  children 
to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  hum 
bly  with  their  God ;  had  nursed  the  fortune 
of  each  with  wisdom,  and  delivered  it  over 
to  him  with  equity.  As  friend,  neighbor, 
and  Christian,  she  had  carried  herself  blame- 


136   THE  STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

lessly  in  the  sight  of  all.  By  reason  of 
strength  of  body  and  mind,  she  had  passed 
the  fourscore  years  that  usually  bound  human 
usefulness.  Her  children  were  doing  their 
parts  well  in  life  ;  of  her  first-born  she  might 
have  said  in  reverent  thankfulness  that  she 
had  seen  in  him  of  the  travail  of  her  soul, 
and  was  satisfied.  There  remained  to  be 
cared  for  only  "  an  old  woman,"  racked  by 
painful  disease.  Yet,  with  all  her  fullness 
of  resignation,  the  faithful  heart,  the  depth 
of  whose  capacity  for  loving  few  divined, 
yearned  over  the  darling  whom  she  had 
never  called  by  that  sweet  name,  —  and  she 
should  see  his  face  no  more. 

She  had  lived  her  love  for  him  as  for  the 
husband  of  her  youth,  for  the  baby  taken 
from  her  breast  almost  fifty  years  ago,  and 
for  the  mother  whose  fostering  care  of  the 
fatherless  girl  had  been  her  training  for  a 
similar  task. 

Ah,  well !  she  would  soon  be  with  them, 
and  God  was  good.  His  mercies  were  from 
everlasting,  and  his  faithfulness  unto  all 
generations. 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  137 

She  died,  "  upheld  by  unfaltering  faith  in 
the  promises  of  the  Bible,  and  by  full  belief 
in  the  communion  of  the  saints,"  August 
25,  1 789,  surrounded  by  children  and  friends. 
New  York  was  a  week  away  even  by  special 
post-rider,  and  the  President  did  not  receive 
the  news  until  September  i. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

MARY  WASHINGTON  had  been  one  of  the 
most  familiar  figures  in  Fredericksburg  for 
over  fourteen  years,  and  the  announcement 
of  her  decease  produced  a  profound  sensa 
tion.  The  closed  blinds  of  the  corner-cot 
tage  suggested  to  high  and  low  incidents  of 
the  busy  existence  that  had  become  a  part 
of  the  history  of  the  town.  Men  gathered 
in  groups  on  the  street-corners  to  discuss 
in  bated  tones  national  events  with  which 
the  life  that  had  gone  out  was  connected ; 
women,  in  their  own  homes,  or  "running 
over  "  to  sit  upon  a  neighbor's  doorstep  or 
porch,  in  the  sweet  informal  fashion  of 
Southern  sociability,  reminded  one  another 
of  the  many  "  ways,"  the  very  eccentricity  of 
which  was  charming  now,  that  had  marked 
Madam  Washington's  individuality. 

Of  how  used  they  were  to  see  her  in  the 
summer  sunsets  emerge  from  the  side-gate 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  139 

of  her  garden  (the  one  by  which  Lafayette 
entered),  and  pace  slowly  down  the  side-walk 
to  the  stable  to  be  sure  that  Stephen  bedded 
and  fed  the  horses,  and  that  Betsy,  his  wife, 
"  stripped "  the  last  and  richest  drops  of 
cream  from  the  cows.  She  would  stand  at 
the  open  doors  of  the  stable,  watching  these 
operations  and  giving  orders  for  the  night 
or  morrow,  exchanging  cheery  salutations 
with  chance  passers-by,  her  never-idle  fin 
gers  busy  with  her  knitting,  or,  at  certain 
seasons,  picking  out  the  black  seeds  from  a 
mass  of  raw  cotton  in  her  apron.  People 
used  to  smile  at  the  homely  picture  when 
they  remembered  her  stately  son.  They  re 
called  to-day  that  there  was  ever  a  sort  of 
dignity  about  her;  that  she  never  gossiped  ; 
how  kindly  was  her  interest  in  the  suffering 
and  sorrowing,  and  that  diligence  in  busi 
ness  became  the  New  World  housewife  more 
than  elegant  idleness. 

How  it  was  told  as  a  joke  at  which  she 
laughed  with  her  daughter  when  it  filtrated 
to  them,  that  when  she  might  be  expected 
at  Kenmore  to  pass  the  day  or  afternoon,  a 


140     THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

watch  was  posted  at  the  upper  windows  of 
the  great  house  to  give  notice  when  the 
blacked-robed  figure,  with  erect  head  and 
measured  step,  issued  from  the  gate,  followed 
by  her  maid,  Patsey,  who  bore  her  mistress's 
work-basket  and  shawl.  Whereupon,  the 
whole  household  force  of  Kenmore  flew  to 
broom,  duster,  and  scrubbing-brush  in  fran 
tic  haste,  to  have  every  corner  speckless 
and  shining  before  "  Ole  Mistis "  arrived, 
and  the  children  were  ready  with  smooth 
pinafores  and  clean  faces  to  meet  "  Grand 
mother  "  at  the  outer  door. 

How  her  son  George  had  learned  punc 
tuality  in  a  school  so  strict  that  her  neigh 
bors  averred  that  they  set  their  watches  by 
the  ringing  of  her  breakfast,  dinner,  and  sup 
per  bell,  sounded  as  regularly  and  as  long 
when  she  wTas  the  only  person  to  be  sum 
moned  to  table  as  if  there  were  a  houseful  of 
guests;  and  that  her  pew  in  St.  George's 
Church  was  occupied  at  precisely  the  same 
moment  of  time  every  Sunday  morning. 

How  the  fashion  of  her  raiment  had  not 
changed  in  twenty  years ;  that  nobody  had 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    141 

ever  seen  her  look  in  the  least  fashionable, 
and  nobody  ever  otherwise  than  perfectly 
neat. 

How  those  who  had  been  to  look  at  her, 
lying  in  the  best  bed  in  the  shadowy  corner 
of  her  chamber,  the  thin  hands  crossed  upon 
a  bosom  that  would  never  ache  again  with 
the  cruel  pain,  had  noted  that  the  strongly- 
marked  features  people  had  not  called  hand 
some  for  forty  years  were  subdued  into  a 
wondrous  likeness  to  her  son,  and  grew 
younger  and  sweeter  hour  by  hour,  until  it 
was  easy  to  credit  the  traditions  of  her 
youthful  comeliness. 

How  —  the  voices  of  the  gossips  falling 
at  the  mention  of  it  —  she  had  chosen  her 
burial-place,  and  asked  of  Mrs.  Lewis  the 
gift  of  a  spot  upon  her  plantation  for  this 
purpose,  and  that  the  grave  had  already 
been  marked  out  where  no  grave  was  ever 
dug  before. 

It  was  a  gentle  knoll  not  far  from  the 
Kenmore  grounds,  and  crowned  by  a  few 
gray  boulders  overshadowed  by  a  clump  of 
trees.  It  had  been  remarked  that  she  often 


142      THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

resorted  to  this  retreat,  sometimes  alone 
with  her  basket  of  mending,  or  her  knitting, 
or  her  Bible.  Nobody  passed  very  near  her 
at  such  times,  for  the  place  lay  apart  from 
any  footpath,  but  many  had  seen  from  a 
distance  the  motionless  figure  seated  upon 
a  flat  rock,  and  wondered  "  what  the  old 
Madam  "  was  thinking  about,  sitting  there 
so  long. 

Oftener,  she  was  surrounded  by  the  Lewis 
children,  who  preferred  "  Grandmother's  Bi 
ble-stories  "  to  any  others  they  ever  heard. 
The  granddaughter  of  one  of  the  little  band 
relates  that  "the  manner  of  her  speaking 
was  so  deeply  impressive  that  neither  the 
lessons  taught  nor  the  scenes  connected  with 
them  were  ever  forgotten  by  the  young  list 
eners."  As  one  of  them  related,  when  he 
was  himself  growing  old,  — "  There  was  a 
spell  over  them  as  they  looked  into  grand 
mother's  uplifted  face,  with  its  sweet  expres 
sion  of  perfect  peace,  and  they  were  very 
quiet  during  the  homeward  walk." 

I  sat  for  a  long  hour  upon  the  flat  gray 
rock  one  fair  May  day  a  few  months  ago. 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    143 

The  "  two  splendid  pines  towering  above  it" 
have  died  a  natural  death,  and  deciduous 
trees  have  taken  their  place.  They  cast 
flickering  shadows  upon  the  rough  surface 
of  the  boulder  as  the  wind  stirred  them  and 
rustled  the  grasses  and  wild  flowers  growing 
about  the  base.  The  knoll  falls  gently  away 
to  the  beautiful  valley  of  the  Rappahannock, 
a  panorama  of  fertile  farms,  groves,  and 
homesteads,  bounded  by  low  hills  curving 
against  the  horizon.  The  time-stained  walls 
and  hipped  roof  of  Kenmore  are  in  full  sight, 
and  the  mother's  eyes  must  have  rested  in 
gratification  upon  the  house  that  held,  in 
luxurious  happiness,  her  only  daughter  and 
the  beloved  little  ones.  Her  own  cottage 
was  then  visible,  for  between  the  two  dwell 
ings  the  space  not  occupied  by  houses  was 
open  from  the  Kenmore  lawn  to  the  garden 
where  flourished  the  calycanthus  and  box 
brought  from  Pine  Grove. 

The  knowledge  that  this  was  the  chosen 
oratory  of  one  whose  character  had  seemed 
to  me,  up  to  that  hour,  granitic  in  reserve 
and  strength,  was  a  revelation.  That  "  silent 


144     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

side"  of  her  had  color  and  sentiment  unsus 
pected  save  by  those  who  knew  and  loved 
her  best,  —  the  children  that  crowded  about 
her  feet  as  the  ferns  and  clover-blossoms 
nestled  in  the  shadow  of  the  rock ;  the  son 
whose  great  nature  sprang  from  hers  as  the 
pines  took  root  in  the  warm  heart  of  the 
earth  beneath  the  boulder. 

The  Rappahannock  mart  mourned  for  her 
on  the  August  day  of  the  funeral,  as  one 
man.  Business  was  suspended,  and  crape 
hung  from  most  of  the  closed  shops  and 
warehouses.  The  sanctuary  in  which  she 
had  been  a  reverent  communicant-  was 
thronged  to  hear  the  burial  service  read 
above  the  remains.  The  coffin  was  carried 
from  the  church  on  men's  shoulders  to  the 
quiet  hillside,  and  every  foot  of  the  knoll 
was  covered  by  the  concourse  of  mourners 
and  spectators.  All  over  the  country  press 
and  pulpit  made  solemn  note  of  the  event; 
in  New  York,  members  of  Congress  and 
many  private  citizens  wore  crape  for  thirty 
days,  as  for  a  distinguished  public  official. 

On  the  evening  of  Thursday,  August  27, 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     145 

1789,  a  near  neighbor  of  Mary  Washington 
penned  this  tribute  to  her  memory :. — 

"  It  is  usual,  when  virtuous  and  conspic 
uous  persons  quit  this  terrestrial  abode,  to 
publish  elaborate  panegyrics  on  their  charac 
ters,  but  suffice  it  to  say  that  she  conducted 
herself  through  this  transitory  life  with 
virtue  and  prudence  worthy  of  the  mother 
of  the  greatest  hero  that  ever  adorned  the 
annals  of  history.  There  is  no  fame  in  the 
world  more  pure  than  that  of  the  mother 
of  Washington,  and  no  woman  since  the 
mother  of  Christ  has  left  a  better  claim  to 
the  affectionate  reverence  of  mankind." 

George  Washington  Parke  Custis,  the 
grandson  of  Martha  Washington,  and  the 
adopted  son  of  the  first  President,  wrote 
thirty-seven  years  after  her  decease :  — 

"  Thus  lived  and  died  this  distinguished 
woman.  Had  she  been  of  the  olden  time, 
statues  would  have  been  erected  to  her 
memory  at  the  Capitol,  and  she  would  have 
been  called  the  Mother  of  Romans.  When 
another  century  has  elapsed,  and  our  de 
scendants  shall  have  learned  the  true  value 


146    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

of  liberty,  how  will  the  fame  of  the  paternal 
chief  be  cherished  in  story  and  in  song! 
Nor  will  be  forgotten  she  who  first  bent  the 
twig  to  incline  the  tree  to  glory.  Then,  and 
not  till  then,  will  youth  and  age,  maid  and 
matron,  aye,  and  bearded  men,  repair  to  the 
now-neglected  grave  of  the  MOTHER  OF 
WASHINGTON." 

The  tale  of  the  various  attempts  to  erect 
a  suitable  memorial  above  the  grave  dates 
very  far  back.  Projects  were  agitated  soon 
after  Mrs.  Washington's  death  to  mark  the 
spot  by  a  stone  to  be  paid  for  by  the  United 
States  Government.  In  the  confusion  at 
tendant  upon  the  establishment  of  a  new 
nation,  these  lapsed,  were  revived,  and  again 
forgotten.  Mr.  Custis's  stirring  appeal  in 
1826  awoke  interest  all  over  the  country,  and 
for  some  months  it  seemed  that  the  work 
would  be  done.  The  proverbial  apathy  of 
republics  to  their  dead  benefactors  was  not 
so  easily  overcome.  The  Kenmore  estate 
passed  out  of  the  Lewis  family,  and  the  suc 
ceeding  proprietors  buried  the  dead  of  two 
generations  near  the  now  sunken  mound 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    147 

under  which  lay  all  that  was  mortal  of  Mary 
Washington,  with  the  faithful  housekeeper 
and  life-long  friend  of  Mrs.  Lewis  close  be 
side  her.  Mrs.  Lewis  died  in  Culpepper 
County,  at  her  daughter's  home,  and  was 
buried  there.  Washington  slept  in  the 
mouldering  vault  at  Mount  Vernon.  By 
and  by  a  low  brick  wall  inclosed  the  family 
bury  ing-ground  close  by  the  grave  of  the 
two  women,  and  made  more  palpable  the 
neglect  of  that  which  was  left  outside. 

In  1833,  Silas  Burrows,  a  wealthy  and 
patriotic  citizen  of  New  York,  offered  to 
bear  the  whole  expense  of  constructing  a 
stately  monument  to  the  memory  of  "  MARY, 
THE  MOTHER  OF  WASHINGTON." 

The  design  lies  before  me  as  I  write.  A 
square  pedestal  bears  the  simple  inscription 
I  have  just  set  down.  Grecian  columns,  two 
on  each  side,  are  set  in  embrasures  above; 
four  eagles  sit  over  these  ;  an  obelisk  tapers 
to  the  bust  of  Washington,  and  upon  the 
bust  is  a  fifth  eagle,  with  outstretched  wings 
and  beak.  The  conception  is  fantastic  and 
ungraceful,  and  was  to  be  expensive. 


148      THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

The  corner-stone  was  laid  with  great 
pomp  and  circumstance,  which  were  duly 
detailed  in  the  best  manner  of  the  Jenkyns 
of  the  day  in  the  columns  of  the  New  York 
Mirror,  date  of  June  8,  1833.  Brittle  pages 
that  crack  as  we  flutter  them  are  covered 
with  eulogy  of  the  dead  and  the  self-gratula- 
tions  of  the  living.  We  read  with  mournful 
curiosity,  considering  what  followed  it  all, 
that  early  on  the  morning  of  May  7,  1833, 
the  city  was  crowded  to  overflowing.  At 
ten  o'clock  a  procession  was  formed  by  the 
marshals  of  the  day,  in  the  following  order: 

1.  A  detachment  of  cavalry. 

2.  The  chief  architect  and  Masonic  soci 
eties.     In  this  division  Mr.  Burrows  was  as 
signed  a  conspicuous  and  honorable  situa 
tion. 

3.  The  President  of  the  United  States  in 
an  open  carriage  with  the  head  of  depart 
ments  and  his  private  secretary,  accompa 
nied  by  the  Monument  Committee. 

4.  Clergy  and  relatives  of  Washington. 

5.  The  .Mayor  and  Common  Council. 

6.  A  handsome  company  of  small  boys,  in 
complete  uniform,  with  wooden  guns. 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    149 

7.  The  officers  of  the  army  and  navy  of 
the  United  States,  and  the  invited  strangers. 

8.  A  battalion  of   volunteers    under  the 
command  of  Major  Patten,  and  several  com 
panies   of   infantry  from    Washington    and 
Alexandria,  with  the  Marine  Band. 

9.  Strangers  and  citizens,  six  abreast.     It 
is  estimated  that  there   were  between  ten 
and  fifteen  thousand  persons  present  on  the 
occasion. 

The  corner-stone  was  adjusted  with  Ma 
sonic  ceremonies,  and  Andrew  Jackson  laid 
upon  it  the  engraved  plate,  "intended  to 
distinguish  it."  In  the  address  that  accom 
panied  the  transfer  of  the  plate  from  the 
hands  of  Mr.  Bassett  —  a  relative  of  Madam 
Washington  and  chairman  of  the  Monu 
ment  Committee  —  into  those  of  the  Presi 
dent,  Mr.  Bassett  said  :  — 

"  Let  us  carry  with  us  hence,  engraved  on 
our  hearts,  the  memory  of  her  who  is  here 
interred :  her  fortitude,  her  piety,  her  every 
grace  of  life ;  her  sweet  peace  in  death, 
through  her  sure  hope  of  a  blessed  immor 
tality." 


ISO      THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

The  President  dwelt  at  length  upon  the 
characteristics  of  her  they  had  met  to  honor, 
a  eulogy  which  hundreds  of  his  auditors 
could  have  verified,  or  challenged  from  their 
own  memories.  As  the  speaker  gained  his 
information  from  Madam  Washington's  con 
temporaries,  his  verdict  is  of  distinct  value  : 

"  She  was  remarkable  for  the  vigor  of  her 
intellect  and  the  firmness  of  her  resolution. 
Left  in  early  life  the  sole  parent  of  a  numer 
ous  family,  she  devoted  herself  with  exem 
plary  fidelity  to  the  task  of  guiding  and 
educating  them.  ...  A  firm  believer  in 
the  sacred  truths  of  religion,  she  taught  its 
principles  to  her  children,  and  inculcated 
an  early  obedience  to  its  injunctions.  It  is 
said  by  those  who  knew  her  intimately  that 
she  acquired  and  maintained  a  wonderful 
ascendancy  over  those  around  her.  This 
true  characteristic  of  genius  attended  her 
through  life,  and  even  in  its  decline,  after 
her  son  had  led  his  country  to  independence 
and  had  been  called  to  preside  over  her 
councils,  he  approached  her  with  the  same 
reverence  she  had  taught  him  to  exhibit  in 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON     151 

early  youth.  This  course  of  maternal  dis 
cipline  no  doubt  restrained  the  natural  ardor 
of  his  temperament,  and  conferred  upon 
him  that  power  of  self-command  which  was 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  traits  of  his 
character.  .  .  . 

"  Fellow-citizens !  at  your  request  and  in 
your  name,  I  now  deposit  this  plate  in  the 
spot  destined  for  it ;  and  when  the  American 
citizen  shall,  in  after  ages,  come  up  to  this 
high  and  holy  place  and  lay  his  hand  upon 
this  sacred  column,  may  he  recall  the  virtues 
of  her  who  sleeps  beneath,  and  depart  with 
his  affection  purified  and  his  piety  strength 
ened,  while  he  invokes  blessings  upon  the 
memory  of  the  MOTHER  OF  WASHINGTON  ! " 

The  ceremonies  concluded  with  the  read 
ing  of  a  poem  by  Lydia  Huntley  Sigourney, 
then  the  most  popular  writer  of  verse  in 
America.  We  make  room  for  a  portion 
of  it:  — 

"Long  hast  thou  slept  unnoticed.     Nature  stole 
In  her  soft  ministry  around  thy  bed, 
And  spread  her  vernal  coverings,  violet-gemmed, 
And  pearled  with  dews.     She  bade  sweet  Summer 
bring 


152     THE   STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

Gifts  of  frankincense  with  sweet  song  of  birds, 
And  Autumn  cast  his  yellow  coronet 
Down  at  thy  feet ;  —  and  stormy  Winter  speak 
Hoarsely  of  man's  neglect.     But  now  we  come 
To  do  thee  homage,  mother  of  our  chief ! 
Fit  homage,  such  as  honoreth  him  who  pays. 

"  Methinks  we  see  thee  as  in  olden  time, 
Simple  in  garb,  majestic  and  serene, 
Unawed  by  pomp  and  circumstance  ;  in  truth, 
Inflexible,  and  with  a  Spartan  zeal 
Repressing  vice,  and  making  folly  grave. 
Thou  didst  not  deem  it  woman's  part  to  waste 
Life  in  inglorious  sloth,  to  sport  awhile 
Amid  the  flowers,  or  on  the  summer  wave, 
Then  fleet  like  the  ephemeron  away, 
Building  no  temple  in  her  children's  hearts, 
Save  to  the  vanity  and  pride  of  life 
Which  she  had  worshiped." 

I  have  made  this  long  excerpt  from  the 
proceedings  of  that  day  —  memorable  in  the 
history  of  Fredericksburg  —  not  in  derision, 
or  even  in  sad  sarcasm,  but  as  cumulative 
testimony  to  the  native  nobility,  the  sterling 
virtues,  and  rare  powers  of  her  whose  story 
I  have  told,  out  of  the  fullness  of  a  heart 
moved  by  the  study,  and  by  the  thought 
of  the  tarnish  left  upon  the  national  name 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON      153 

by  failure   to    recognize    our  debt   to   this 
woman. 

Almost  sixty  years  after  panegyric  and 
poem  vibrated  upon  the  listening  air  of  that 
May-day,  there  stands  above  the  corner 
stone  that  which  desecrates  the  spot.  The 
hand  that  laid  the  marble  block  and  that 
which  set  the  engraved  plate  upon  it  were 
dust  a  generation  ago ;  those  who  remain  of 
the  boy-soldiers  are  aged  men,  telling  in 
quavering  tones  how  the  architect  died  with 
out  the  sight  of  the  stately  pile  he  had 
planned,  and  of  the  legends,  some  romantic, 
some  reasonable,  which  account  for  the 
abandonment  of  the  scheme.  Fredericks- 
burg  folks  affect  most  seriously  the  tale  that 
a  Southern  girl  set  the  enterprise  as  a  test 
of  a  Northern  lover's  devotion,  and  jilted 
him  before  the  work  was  finished.  The 
likelier  story  is  that  a  sudden  reverse  of  for 
tune  compelled  Mr.  Burrows  to  withhold  the 
funds  necessary  for  the  completion  of  the 
monument.  They  tell  you  —  white-haired 
men  who  stepped  so  proudly  to  national  airs 
sounded  by  the  Marine  Band  —  that  when 


154     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

the  marble  monolith  which  was  to  be  set 
upon  the  recessed  columns  and  buttressed 
corners  was  landed  at  the  Fredericksburg 
dock,  disasters  followed  the  attempt  to  drag 
it  the  half  mile  and  more  that  lay  between 
the  river  and  monument.  A  mule  was 
killed  and  a  horse  badly  hurt,  and  finally  the 
immense  mass  was  drawn  by  long  lines  of 
men  to  its  resting-place. 

It  rests  there  still,  prone  at  the  base  of  the 
half-ruined  pile,  stained  by  time  and  weather, 
and  chipped  by  vandal  hammers,  a  sight  as 
melancholy  as  any  the  sun  shines  on.  A 
worthier  memorial  of  the  American  matron 
whom  the  nations  praised  afar  off  is  the 
sturdy  boulder,  concealed  from  the  passing 
tourist  by  the  wall  that  threw  out  Mary 
Washington's  grave  into  the  common  where 
cattle  browsed  and  village  tramps  sauntered 
and  slumbered  at  pleasure. 

It  was  reserved  for  the  women  whose 
grandmothers  were  her  contemporaries  to 
right  this  wrong  to  her  and  to  their  sex. 
With  no  blare  of  trumpets  in  the  way  of 
public  demonstration,  and  no  protestation  of 


UNFINISHED   MONUMENT 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    155 

what  they  meant  to  accomplish,  the  mem 
bers  of  the  NATIONAL  MARY  WASHINGTON 
MEMORIAL  ASSOCIATION  are  moving  steadily 
toward  the  desired  end.  By  the  time  the 
reader's  eye  rests  upon  these  lines,  as  we 
hope  fondly,  success  will  be  so  far  assured 
that  we  may  gratefully  look  forward  to  the 
day  when  the  "  sacred  column  "  will  be  no 
more  a  chimera  of  the  oratorical  imagination, 
or  a  stinging  satire  upon  bombastic  patriot 
ism  that  began  to  build  and  was  not  willing 
to  finish. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

MADAM  WASHINGTON'S  great-granddaugh 
ter  says  of  her  personal  appearance,  as  de 
scribed  "  by  those  who  remembered  her  in 
the  later  years  of  her  life,"  that  she  was  "  of 
medium  size,  and  well  proportioned,  the  dig 
nity  of  bearing  and  the  erect  carriage  giving 
something  of  stateliness  to  her  presence, 
while  her  features  were  regular  and  strongly 
marked,  her  brow  fine,  and  her  eyes  a  clear 
blue." 

Lossing,  upon  the  authority  of  Washing 
ton's  adopted  son,  writes :  — 

"  She  was  of  the  full  height  of  woman, 
and  in  person  compactly  built  and  well  pro 
portioned.  She  possessed  great  physical 
strength  and  powers  of  endurance,  and  en 
joyed  through  life  robust  health.  Her  fea 
tures  were  strongly  marked,  but  pleasing  in 
expression ;  at  the  same  time  there  was  a 
dignity  in  her  manner  that  was,  at  first, 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON    157 

somewhat  repellant  to  a  stranger,  but  it 
always  commanded  thorough  respect  from 
her  friends  and  acquaintances.  Her  voice 
was  sweet,  almost  musical,  in  its  cadences, 
yet  it  was  firm  and  decided,  and  she  was 
always  cheerful  in  spirit." 

Mr.  Custis  held  to  the  latest  day  of  his 
life  the  belief  that  "  there  was  no  portrait 
extant  of  the  MOTHER  OF  WASHINGTON." 
The  emphatic  deliverance  casts  discredit 
upon  what  were  else  a  plausible  story  touch 
ing  a  picture  of  Mary  Washington  taken  in 
her  early  bellehood,  which  hung  in  the  bed 
room  of  the  first  President,  at  Mount  Ver- 
non.  As  a  member  of  Washington's  family, 
it  was  impossible  that  Martha  Washington's 
grandson  should  have  been  ignorant  of  the 
existence  of  a  picture  said  to  have  been 
most  highly  prized  by  the  President.  So 
jealous  was  his  affection  for  it,  that  the 
plausible  tale  alluded  to  above  dwells  upon 
his  reluctance  to  commit  it  to  an  artist,  who 
offered  to  have  mended  a  "  hole  ground  in 
the  canvas"  by  an  accident,  and  the  picture 
restored  in  England.  The  commission  was 


158     THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

finally  given,  the  tale  goes  on  to  say,  the 
picture  went  to  England  five  years  before 
Washington's  death,  and  was  forgotten,  ap 
parently,  by  him  who  had  been  unwilling  to 
have  it  out  of  his  sight  for  so  many  years, 
certainly  forgotten  by  his  executors,  who 
never  claimed  it.  The  improbability  that 
Mr.  Custis,  a  zealous  antiquarian,  and  punc 
tilious  to  a  fault  in  treasuring  reminiscences 
of  the  great  man  whose  adopted  son  he  was, 
should  also  have  let  slip  from  memory  all 
the  interesting  particulars  connected  with 
the  transfer  of  the  valued  relic,  need  not  be 
enlarged  upon.  The  circumstances  would 
certainly  have  been  recalled  to  his  mind  by 
the  many  questions  put  to  him  as  to  whether 
or  not  any  likeness  of  her  whom  he  eulo 
gizes  as  "  this  distinguished  woman  "  were 
ever  painted.  In  compiling  his  Records 
and  Private  Memoranda  of  Washington, 
and  in  his  biographical  sketch  of  Mary 
Washington  herself,  the  defaced  portrait 
would  have  been  too  tempting  a  subject  to 
be  passed  over. 

The  pretensions  to   genuineness  of   the 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   159 

fancy  sketch  of  the  Louis  Ouinze  beauty 
who  has  done  duty  as  the  Rose  of  Epping 
Forest  in  divers  periodicals  have  been  dis 
posed  of  by  abler  pens  than  mine.  The 
object  of  this  supplementary  chapter  to  a 
narrative  that  has  been  throughout  a  labor 
of  love  is  to  present  a  matter  that  has  come 
to  light  since  Mr.  Custis  wrote  and  lived. 
The  history  of  another  picture  claiming  to 
be  a  likeness  of  Mary  Washington  is  told 
by  Lossing  in  his  Mary  and  Martha,  the 
Mother  and  Wife  of  Washington.  From 
this  I  compile  the  Story  of  a  Portrait,  which 
I  crave  leave  to  lay  before  the  reader  in 
these  concluding  pages  of  my  book. 

Mr.  George  Field,  who  died  in  England 
in  1854,  at  the  age  of  seventy-seven,  was 
the  author  of  the  British  School  of  Modern 
Artists,  and  other  works  upon  art  and 
philosophy.  In  his  boyhood,  while  on  a 
visit  to  Cookham,  Berkshire,  England,  he 
saw  the  "  pretty  country  cottage  in  which," 
said  neighborhood  gossips,  "  the  parents  of 
General  Washington  had  resided  "  while  in 
England,  and  from  which  they  removed  to 


160    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

America.  In  the  vicinity  of  Cookham  lived 
Mrs.  Morer,  an  old  woman  whose  aunt  — 
or  so  she  was  fond  of  relating  —  had  been 
a  maid  in  Augustine  Washington's  family 
and  accompanied  him  and  Mrs.  Washington 
to  America.  Upon  quitting  England,  the 
niece,  whose  maiden  name  was  Taylor,  said 
that  the  Washingtons  had  presented  to  her 
family  among  other  articles  of  household 
stuff,  ornaments,  etc.,  a  portrait  of  Mrs. 
Washington  taken  before  her  marriage. 
Mr.  Field  saw  and  examined  the  picture 
then,  and,  hearing  some  years  afterward  (in 
1812)  of  Mrs.  Morer's  death,  he  sent  an 
agent  to  buy  up  all  her  pictures  at  an 
auction-sale  of  her  effects.  Among  them, 
as  he  had  hoped  and  intended  to  do,  he 
secured  the  portrait  he  had  coveted.  By  a 
will  dated  in  1852,  Mr.  Field  bequeathed 
this  relic,  in  the  authenticity  of  which  he 
firmly  believed,  to  Mr.  George  Harvey,  an 
artist  who  had  heard  and  credited  the  his 
tory  of  the  legacy.  After  receiving  it,  Mr. 
Harvey  made  it  his  business  to  visit  Cook- 
ham  to  examine  the  registers  of  the  parish 


THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON    l6l 

and  catechise  "old  inhabitants."  The  popu 
lar  tradition  that  the  Washingtons  had  once 
been  residents  of  the  region  was  proved  to 
be  correct  by  the  frequent  recurrence  of  the 
names  of  Washington  and  Ball  in  the  burial 
register  from  1701  to  1729.  As  I  have  be 
fore  stated,  the  registers  of  burials  and  mar 
riages  had  been  maliciously  destroyed,  the 
present  incumbent  of  the  living  explained, 
"  by  a  rascally  lawyer." 

Among  the  aged  residents  whom  Mr. 
Harvey  interviewed  was  a  man  who  had 
once  occupied  a  house'"  in  which  it  was  sup 
posed  that  George  Washington  was  born." 
He  ascertained,  moreover,  that  Augustine 
Washington  was  in  England  in  1729  upon 
business. 

The  next  owner  of  the  picture  was  Pro 
fessor  S.  F.  B.  Morse,  LL.  D.  He  purchased 
it,  with  the  "  pedigree "  thereof,  from  Mr. 
Harvey.  It  was  accompanied  by  a  certified 
copy  of  Mr.  Field's  will  and  his  reasons  for 
believing  in  the  genuineness  of  the  portrait. 
Professor  Morse  brought  it  to  the  notice  of 
Dr.  Lossing  while  the  latter  was  on  a  visit 


162     THE   STORY  OF  MARY   WASHINGTON 

at  the  Professor's  house  in  New  York.  The 
venerable  historiographer  was  at  once  struck 
by  the  resemblance  to  the  best  likenesses 
of  George  Washington,  and  became  thor 
oughly  convinced  by  examination  of  letters 
and  written  affidavits  submitted  to  him  by 
Professor  Morse,  that  the  portrait  was  that 
of  Mary  Ball. 

In  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Harvey,  Professor 
Morse,  and  other  art-critics,  the  painting  is 
from  the  hand  of  Thomas  Hudson,  who  was 
a  popular  portrait-painter  in  London  about 
1723. 

Here  is  Dr.  Lossing's  summing  up,  after 
a  patient  rehearsal  of  the  incidents  con 
nected  with  the  discovery  of  the  picture  and 
its  passage  from  one  owner  to  another :  — 

"  At  the  time  of  Mary  Ball's  sojourn  in 
England,  Hudson  had  a  summer-residence 
in  Berkshire  County,  in  the  neighborhood 
of  the  residences  of  the.  Washingtons  and 
Balls.  May  hot  one  of  the  latter  have  em 
ployed  him  to  paint  the  portrait  of  their 
charming  Virginia  kinswoman  ?  Professor 
Morse  expressed  his  strong  conviction  that 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON   163 

this  picture  is  a  portrait  of  Mary  Ball,  which 
had  somehow  fallen  into  the  possession  of 
Mrs.  Morer,  and,  through  Mr.  Field  and  Mr. 
Harvey,  had  come  to  him.  And  so  satisfied 
am  I  by  the  weight  of  concurrent  testimony 
that  it  is  a  portrait  of  the  pretty  Virginia 
girl  whom  Augustine  Washington  married 
in  1730,  that  I  venture  to  offer  a  copy  of  it 
in  this  volume  as  a  genuine  likeness  of  the 
person  of  the  MOTHER  OF  WASHINGTON." 

Thus  far  had  I  read  when  I  turned  back 
to  study  the  not  very  fine  engraving,  with 
the  facsimile  of  Mary  Ball's  signature  be 
neath  it.  While  I  scanned  it,  a  friend  was 
announced,  to  whom  I  said,  presently,  with 
out  preface,  and  concealing  the  name  below 
the  print  with  my  hand  :  — 

"  Did  you  ever  see  this  face  before? " 

"  Never,"  he  answered  unhesitatingly. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  it  ?  " 

"  Hum-m-m !  I  can  tell  you  whom  it  re 
sembles, —  General  Washington!"  with  the 
air  of  one  who  says  a  preposterous  thing. 

His  amazement  was  unaffected  when  told 
how  nearly  he  had  hit  the  mark.  He  had 


1 64    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

had  no  suspicion  of  the  nature  of  my  stud 
ies,  or  that  any  likeness  of  Mary  Washing 
ton  was  extant. 

A  year  or  more  after  this  bit  of  "  concur 
rent  "  down  had  floated  to  me,  a  committee 
appointed  by  the  Managers  of  the  NATIONAL 
MARY  WASHINGTON  MEMORIAL  ASSOCIATION 
was  permitted,  by  the  courtesy  of  a  daughter 
of  the  late  Professor  Morse,  to  inspect  the 
picture,  which  belongs  to  the  Morse  estate. 
The  painting  has  all  of  Hudson's  faults, 
and  few  of  his  merits,  but  conveys  the  inde 
scribable  impression  one  often  experiences 
in  looking  at  the  picture  of  a  person  he 
has  never  seen,  —  that  the  likeness  must  be 
excellent.  As  a  work  of  art,  it  is  below 
mediocrity,  being  flat,  and  without  depth  of 
color  or  vigor  of  treatment.  These  blem 
ishes  may  explain  why  it  was  not  trans 
ported  to  America  at  a  time  when  freight 
was  troublesome  and  expensive.  There  is 
a  tradition  that  Augustine  Washington's 
family  portraits  were  destroyed  when  the 
Wakefield  house  was  burned.  It  may  well 
have  been  that  he  possessed  one  of  his  wife 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  165 

which  he  preferred  to  what  Hudson  may 
have  dashed  off  upon  the  canvas,  in  experi 
ment  or  pastime,  when  they  were  country 
neighbors. 

The  portrait  is  less  than  life-size,  and  rep 
resents  a  sitting  figure.  The  bodice  is  cut 
low,  and  fits  loosely  upon  bosom  and  shoul 
ders.  In  color  the  gown  is  a  warm  russet, 
and  the  drapery  has  a  shadowless  effect,  as 
if  the  thought  had  been  to  lay  another  color 
over  it.  The  abundant  hair  is  light  chest 
nut  ;  the  eyes  are  of  a  bluish  gray,  and 
rather  far  apart ;  the  nose  is  a  fine  aquiline ; 
the  corners  of  the  mouth  are  slightly  de 
pressed.  The  hands  are  small,  and  so  badly 
drawn  as  to  look  like  stuffed  gloves ;  one  of 
them  holds  a  lily  between  thumb  and  finger 
as  it  lies  upon  the  girl's  knee.  A  string  of 
pearls  encircles  a  pretty  throat ;  the  pose 
is  natural  and  graceful,  yet  there  is  some 
thing  ungirlish  in  it.  The  resemblance  to 
George  Washington  is  startling  at  the  first 
glance,  and  it  grew  upon  the  little  group 
of  gazers  until  we  could  hardly  withdraw 
our  eyes. 


166  THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

The  calm  dignity  of  feature  and  figure ; 
the  clear,  fearless  eyes  over  which  the  lids 
drooped  heavily  toward  the  temples,  —  a 
marked  peculiarity  in  all  the  Washington 
portraits ;  the  half-sad  look  imparted  to  the 
lower  half  of  the  face  by  the  downward 
curve  of  the  lip-lines,  —  had  in  them  some 
thing  weirdly  familiar  and  fascinating.  We 
placed  the  picture  in  half  a  dozen  different 
lights,  and  looked  at  it  from  every  angle ; 
then  the  eyes  of  each  member  of  the  com 
mittee  were  turned  upon  the  others,  and  all 
said  mutely  the  same  thing. 

Something  was  said,  presently,  of  a  desire 
to  compare  the  portrait  with  one  of  "  her 
son."  The  phrase  dropped  naturally  from 
the  tongue,  and  everybody  accepted  it  with 
out  smile  or  cavil.  Mr.  G.  W.  Story,  the 
courteous  and  accomplished  Curator  of  the 
Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art,  in  whose  pri 
vate  office  the  painting  has  been  placed  for 
safe-keeping,  left  us  for  a  moment,  and,  re 
turning,  placed  an  admirable  copy  of  Gilbert 
Stuart's  "  Washington  "  upon  a  chair  in  a 
line  with  Hudson's  picture.  A  simultaneous 


THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  l6/ 

exclamation  broke  from  all  present.  As  the 
most  skeptical  among  us  afterward  confessed, 
—  it  was  like  "  Q.  E.  D."  ! 

A  hundred  times  since  I  began  this  Story 
have  the  two  faces,  as  I  then  beheld  them, 
passed  between  me  and  the  paper.  Gravely 
meditative,  with  the  subtle  intimation  of 
repressed  power  in  every  lineament,  and  the 
nameless  pensiveness  bespeaking  a  strait 
ening  of  soul  until  a  great,  overshadowing 
destiny  be  accomplished,  —  these  link  them 
together  in  my  memory,  and  to  my  appre 
hension  proclaim  them  to  be  of  one  blood 
and  one  spirit. 

However  much  of  this  may  be  fantasy 
and  how  much  truth,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  attributes  which  made  the  greatest 
American  what  all  ages  will  acknowledge 
him  to  have  been  were  set  like  type  of 
purest  metal  in  the  plastic  nature  of  the 
"  big  boy  "  by  her  who  has  slept  for  over  a 
century  upon  the  consecrated  knoll  over 
looking  the  Rappahannock  valley. 

Spontaneous  generation  of  virtue  is  no 
more  a  possibility  than  that  physical  life 


168    THE  STORY  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON 

should  be  self-quickened.  Washington  was 
not  an  abnormal  product  of  chance  elements, 
but  the  natural  and  glorious  upspringing 
and  fruit-bearing,  after  its  kind,  of  good  seed 
cast  into  good  ground. 


APPENDIX 


THE  WILL  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON,  AS  REGISTERED  IN 
THE  CLERK'S  OFFICE  AT  FREDERICKSBURG,  VIRGINIA. 

IN  the  name  of  God  !  Amen  !  I,  Mary  Wash 
ington,  of  Fredericksburg  in  the  County  of  Spotsyl- 
vania,  being  in  good  health,  but  calling  to  mind  the 
uncertainty  of  this  life,  and  willing  to  dispose  of  what 
remains  of  my  worldly  estate,  do  make  and  publish 
this,  my  last  will,  recommending  my  soul  into  the 
hands  of  my  Creator,  hoping  for  a  remission  of  all 
my  sins  through  the  merits  and  mediation  of  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Saviour  of  mankind ;  I  dispose  of  my 
worldly  estate  as  follows : 

Imprimis.  —  I  give  to  my  son,  General  George 
Washington,  all  my  land  in  Accokeek  Run,  in  the 
County  of  Stafford,  and  also  my  negro  boy  George, 
to  him  and  his  heirs  forever.  Also  my  best  bed, 
bedstead,  and  Virginia  cloth  curtains  (the  same  that 
stands  in  my  best  bed-room),  my  quilted  blue  and 
white  quilt  and  my  best  dressing-glass. 

Item.  —  I  give  and  devise  to  my  son,  Charles 
Washington,  my  negro  man  Tom,  to  him  and  his 
assigns  forever. 


17°  APPENDIX 

Item.  —  I  give  and  devise  to  my  daughter  Bettie 
Lewis,  my  phaeton  and  my  bay  horse. 

Item.  —  I  give  and  devise  to  my  daughter-in-law, 
Hannah  Washington,  my  purple  cloth  cloak  lined 
with  shag. 

Item.  —  I  give  and  devise  to  my  grandson,  Corbin 
Washington,  my  negro  wench,  old  Bet,  my  riding 
chair,  and  two  black  horses,  to  him  and  his  assigns 
forever. 

Item.  —  I  give  and  devise  to  my  grandson,  Fielding 
Lewis,  my  negro  man  Frederick,  to  him  and  his  as 
signs  forever,  also  eight  silver  tablespoons,  half  of  my 
crockery  ware  and  the  blue  and  white  tea  china,  with 
book  case,  oval  table,  one  bedstead,  one  pair  sheets, 
one  pair  blankets  and  white  cotton  counterpain,  two 
table  cloths,  six  red  leather  chairs,  half  my  peuter  and 
one  half  of  my  kitchen  furniture. 

Item.  —  I  give  and  devise  to  my  grandson,  Law 
rence  Lewis,  my  negro  wench  Lydia,  to  him  and  his 
assigns  forever. 

Item.  —  I  give  and  devise  to  my  granddaughter, 
Bettie  Curtis,  my  negro  woman,  little  Bet,  and  her 
future  increase,  to  her  and  her  assigns  forever.  Also 
my  largest  looking-glass,  my  walnut  writing  desk  and 
drawers,  a  square  dining-table,  one  bed,  bedstead, 
bolster,  one  pillow,  one  blanket  and  pair  sheets,  white 
Virginia  cloth  counterpains  and  purple  curtains,  my 
red  and  white  tea  china,  teaspoons,  and  the  other  half 
of  my  peuter  and  crockeryware,  and  the  remainder  of 
my  iron  kitchen  furniture. 


APPENDIX  i;i 

Item.  —  I  give  and  devise  to  my  grandson,  George 
Washington,  my  next  best  glass,  one  bed,  bedstead, 
bolster,  one  pillow,  one  pair  sheets,  one  blanket  and 
counterpain. 

Item.  —  I  devise  all  my  wearing  apparel  to  be 
equally  divided  between  my  granddaughters,  Bettie 
Curtis,  Fannie  Ball,  and  Milly  Washington,  —  but 
should  my  daughter,  Bettie  Lewis,  fancy  any  one  two 
or  three  articles,  she  is  to  have  them  before  a  division 
thereof. 

Lastly,  I  nominate  and  appoint  my  said  son,  Gen 
eral  George  Washington,  executor  of  this,  my  will,  and 
as  I  owe  few  or  no  debts,  I  direct  my  executor  to  give 
no  security  or  appraise  my  estate,  but  desire  the  same 
may  be  allotted  to  my  devisees,  with  as  little  trouble 
and  delay  as  may  be,  desiring  their  acceptance  thereof 
as  all  the  token  I  now  have  to  give  them  of  my  love 
for  them. 

In  witness  thereof,  I  have  hereunto  set  my  hand 
and  seal  the  2oth  day  of  May,  1788. 

MARY  WASHINGTON. 
Witness,  JOHN  FERNEYHOUGH. 

Signed,  sealed,  and  published  in  the  presence  of 
the  said  Mary  Washington  and  at  her  desire. 

JNO.  MERCER, 

JOSEPH  WALKER. 


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